


Everything Stops (Don't Want You Like a Best Friend)

by sentientaltype



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: A whole lot of angst, Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/F, aubrey still doesn't like beca but what can you do, beca is a little bitch, chloe is just tryna keep it together, i mean it's basically just lovesick chloe and oblivious beca, inspired by another work, more angst than anyone asked for, some smut at the beginning, vaguely inspired by a few songs on reputation by taylor swift
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-02-23 02:54:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13180884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sentientaltype/pseuds/sentientaltype
Summary: Chloe Beale does not fall in love.Chloe Beale sleeps with whoever she wants, whenever she wants, and she never once has caught feelings for any of them. Chloe is the party girl, everywhere she goes a bottle of Smirnoff and whatever mixer she’s chosen following.Chloe Beale also doesn’t believe in the concept of falling for your best friend. She’s been best friends with Aubrey Posen for the best part of four years now, and not once has she ever been remotely attracted to the blonde’s controlling, slightly anal personality.  None of the Bellas have ever done anything for her, nor have any of the Trebles, thankfully.So when Chloe meets Beca Mitchell for the first time, she knows she’s absolutely fucked.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Perdition](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10242218) by [morningsound15](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morningsound15/pseuds/morningsound15). 



> here's a 17,000 word non AU one-shot that nobody asked for. i took inspiration for this story from morningsound15’s “Perdition,” and have already discussed terms with the fic’s author, but i did use similar plot points and structure to her fic, so i give credit where credit is due. it's a wonderful fic, so be sure to check out "Perdition" as well. 
> 
> Starts at PP1 and continues through PP2, with no affiliation to PP3.
> 
> WARNING: this work contains a brief, fleeting mention of suicide as well as homicide. if these mentions may be triggering for you, please do not continue reading or do so with caution.

Chloe Beale does _not_ fall in love. 

Chloe Beale sleeps with whoever she wants, whenever she wants, and she never once has caught feelings for any of them. Chloe is the party girl, everywhere she goes a bottle of Smirnoff and whatever mixer she’s chosen following.

Chloe Beale also doesn’t believe in the concept of falling for your best friend. She’s been best friends with Aubrey Posen for the best part of four years now, and not once has she ever been remotely attracted to the blonde’s controlling, slightly anal personality. None of the Bellas have ever done anything for her, nor have any of the Trebles, thankfully. 

So when Chloe meets Beca Mitchell for the first time, she knows she’s absolutely fucked.

*

“Chlo, I love your sweater!” Stacie says in what must be her wasted voice, even though they’ve just arrived at aca-initiation night.

“Thanks, it’s new,” Chloe smiles but it doesn’t meet her eyes, which are still trained on Beca and Jesse bantering by the stairs. She seems to be making fun of his drunkenness, pushing him in the chest until he leans back and forth. 

“You went shopping without me?” Aubrey nudges her lightly. “You hate shopping alone.”

“I know, I just… felt like buying a new sweater.” Chloe figures she should keep quiet about the dream she had the night she saw Beca naked in the shower where the brunette slid a blue cardigan down her shoulders and left marks on the skin that slowly exposed itself. She should keep quiet about the fact that she woke up writhing, her sheets damp with sweat and blankets tossed everywhere, a throb between her legs and a sudden urge to purchase a blue cardigan. 

“I’m gonna go talk to Beca.” The rest of the brand new Bellas have spread out and are all up to their knees in alcohol and Trebles, so none of them think twice about Chloe breaking away, especially not Aubrey, who could start a fire with the lazer glare she’s shooting through Jesse’s head. The redhead saunters over to Beca and takes her hands in hers, pulling her close to her face and leaning so that their noses are practically touching. 

“Oh,” Beca yelps out in surprise as her personal space is invaded. 

“You know, I’m so glad that I met you,” Chloe slurs just a little, enough for her to consider it tasteful. “I think we’re gonna be really fast friends.”

“Yeah?” Beca asks with a smile and Chloe just nods, a quiet “yeah” slipping out on an exhale. “Well, you saw me naked, so…” Beca delivers with a wink and Chloe’s head becomes immediately clouded with images of Beca standing in the shower, “Titanium” gliding timidly out of her throat, sending shockwaves of pride and, well, other things through Chloe’s body. Her stance falters just slightly, but it’s enough for Beca to notice and hold her a little tighter. 

“Sorry,” Chloe slurs, the shots she took upon arrival starting to sink her stomach to the depths of her body cavity and weighing her feet down as if her bones are made of lead. 

“You’re good, dude,” Beca just smiles. “I like your sweater, by the way.” Chloe can’t seem to force a “thank you” out of her throat, though, her brain has shut off and all she can do is be transported back to the hazy dream she hasn’t been able to stop thinking about. 

Chloe Beale does not have sex dreams about her friends.

She does not buy clothes just for the purpose of having them taken off by her friends. 

She definitely does not stand on the risers at aca-initiation feeling the space between her friend charged with electricity, and her hands definitely do not shake from holding back from resting on her friend’s hips. 

But with Beca, Chloe does all of these things. And she has no explanation nor any recollection of what happens next, but she vaguely recalls slipping her hands under Beca’s leather jacket and desperately clawing at her shirt to find some skin. 

She vaguely remembers Beca offering to take her home, and she sort of remembers ditching initiation, and she recalls slamming Beca against the door of her dorm since Chloe couldn’t find her keys. 

(Chloe knew her keys were in her purse. She just knew she wouldn’t have the balls to invite Beca in herself.)

She remembers Kimmy Jin rolling her eyes and leaving the room without so much as a witty comment, and she can recall crashing her lips against Beca’s while the freshman was shoved up against the door. 

She remembers Beca sliding the blue sweater down her shoulders and leaving open mouthed kisses on the exposed skin, just like she’d done in Chloe’s dream. 

She can still feel Beca’s hands in her hair, her mouth on her neck, and her fingers knuckle deep inside of her. 

She can recall feeling a bit hurt when Beca shook her head at Chloe’s attempts to return the favor, quietly admonishing that they were drunk, and they should sleep it off. 

She doesn’t remember much else, but she does remember, painfully so, waking up in Beca’s dorm the next morning, with a glass of water and an advil on the bedside table, but no sign of Beca. 

*

It’s a few months before anything else comes of Beca and Chloe. They become fast friends, just as Chloe predicted, and they seem to have an unspoken rule that they pretend to not remember what happened the night of aca-initiation. Chloe is always very touchy in rehearsal, and Beca never has anything to say about it, so the redhead lets herself indulge in the feeling of Beca’s waist under her palms as she teaches her the choreography. 

(It’s important to note that the choreography in question certainly does not require the amount of contact that Chloe is instigating, but none of the Bellas have taken any notice, and Beca hasn’t said anything about it, so she continues to breathe a little too hard into Beca’s neck and cant her hips up into Beca’s ass a little too much).

The first time Chloe and Beca are drunk together, Cynthia Rose and Stacie drag the Bellas to a frat party. It takes about ten seconds for Aubrey to resign to the couch in the corner of the living room and for Amy to insist that she can chug the rest of the vodka bottle, which is two thirds full (spoiler alert: she can’t). Jesse is there, standing in the backyard chatting with another Treble, and Beca gets a drink and heads their way. Chloe left for the party telling herself she wouldn’t drink tonight, since she may have drunk a little too much wine the night before when Beca texted her a story that Jesse told her. But when her eyes fall on Beca, _her_ Beca, laughing at something Jesse said, her hand resting on his shoulder, she snatches a bottle from Amy’s hands and drinks it down the hatch, not coughing once. 

The night goes on and people start to dance, the DJ being some horny junior who’s decided to play exclusively slow, sultry songs in order to incite some unusual combinations of grinding. Jesse offers Beca a hand to dance which she declines with a polite shake of the head, sending him back into the kitchen and leaving her at the edge of the living room, a foot kicked up on the wall and blue eyes watching the floor over her red cup. 

Chloe sidles out onto the makeshift dance floor, quickly locking eyes with Beca as some guy she can’t see moves up behind her and rests his hands on her waist. She catches wind of Beca’s hand clutching her cup just a bit tighter than before, so she smirks, knowing precisely how to get a rise out of the younger girl. She grinds back on the guy a little harder, throwing her head back as she leans forward, the alcohol in her veins mixing with adrenaline to help her sell the act. When Chloe looks up again, Beca’s head is tilted back as she funnells the rest of her drink down her throat, crushing the empty cup in her hand and throwing it on the ground as her eyes trail anywhere and everywhere on Chloe’s body. The man behind her, who Chloe suspects to be Tom, gets a little more daring, his large hands groping up her sides and chest, but Chloe’s so drunk that she can’t even register it, all she sees is Beca’s look of repulsion and her frustrated stomp out of the room and up the set of stairs in the far corner of the room. Chloe peels herself away from the guy and unsteadily follows after her best friend, not even bothering to find out who’s erection was pressed into her back for a very long three minutes. Once she reaches the top of the stairs, a trip that takes her all too long (she blames it on the heels, but she knows it’s because her eyes are working as two separate units and she can’t see more than a foot in front of her), she begins trying every door in the hallway. Most of them are locked, but Chloe manages to open a bedroom door, revealing Stacie aggressively making out with a frat boy, a sight the redhead really wishes she hadn’t seen.

“Chloe, what the hell?” Stacie squeals and Chloe finds herself frozen in the doorway, the man under Stacie clearly excited due to the prospect of a threesome. She hears a distant thud, followed by a shout, and immediately recognizes it as Beca, so she slams the door behind her and sets out to find her friend. She continues opening doors until the last one at the head of the hallway, where Beca stands facing a blank wall, her fist repeatedly colliding with the plaster, not hard enough to cause injury but hard enough that it makes a sound.

“Beca?” Chloe calls out and the brunette’s head snaps up, her brows drawn together and eyes blazing in a look Chloe’s never seen on her before. She doesn’t have time to think about what it means, let alone ask Beca to explain, before she’s being shoved up against the wall to the left of the door, much like Chloe did to Beca a few months ago. 

( _Too_ much like Chloe did to Beca a few months ago. )

“You don’t get to do that, dude,” Beca practically growls as she holds both of Chloe’s wrists by her side against the wall. 

(If Beca wasn’t staring into her soul, pinning her down and licking her lips, she’d have to laugh at the juxtaposition of the word “dude” in this situation.)

(It’s completely unfitting, but it also screams Beca, and it makes Chloe unable to focus on anything but Beca’s hands on her arms, her eyes boring into Chloe’s skull, the smell of her perfume more intoxicating than any of the drugs being distributed downstairs.)

“Do what?” Chloe asks so quietly that it may as well be a whisper, but she’s only saying it because she knows what she did, and she knows that Beca knows that she knows what she did.

“Grind on that guy like that, watching me watch you, make me think about you doing that on me.” Chloe can’t help the way her heart flutters at the fact that Beca thought about her, or thinks about her, as as much as she tries to tuck it away, she knows that, as always, she’s absolutely fucked. 

She opens her mouth to reply but Beca doesn’t give her the chance, connecting their lips in an aggressive move that causes Chloe’s head to smack against the wall. She blames the groan that slips into Beca’s mouth on said head-smack, but she knows damn well that it’s because one of Beca’s hands lets go of Chloe’s in order to shove the door closed and turn the lock on the handle. It takes all of Chloe’s drunken strength to propel herself off the wall and walk Beca towards the double bed that definitely doesn’t belong to them, the duo crashing ungracefully on the mattress. Chloe manages to stay on top for all of five seconds before Beca flips them over, bringing one leg up between both of Chloe’s and pressing between her thighs, a groan tearing deep from Chloe’s throat. Beca lifts her head up to give the redhead a once-over, her eyes greedily raking up the dress Chloe bought just a few days ago.

“Is this new?” Beca asks, her voice incredibly low. Chloe just nods, knowing she bought it with the hope that Beca would get the chance to peel it off of her, but she doesn’t need to know that. “You look so fucking sexy, Chlo,” she mumbles, the flats of her palms trailing down the sides of Chloe’s body, just as the guy from earlier did, before her small hands move to unzip the bodycon at the back. Chloe skipped out on a bra tonight, and she smirks at the way Beca’s eyes widen when she pulls at the shoulders of the dress. 

“Don’t just sit there, Becs,” she admonishes, noticing that her words come out clearer than she’d expected, which leads her to the observation that she’s not moving or thinking sluggishly, and the image of Beca Mitchell looking down at her like she’s an angel is perfectly clear. She decides that Beca has sobered her up enough to comprehend just what her best friend is doing to her, but the gloss over Beca’s blue eyes is still evident. Beca complies easily, leaning down to take a nipple into her mouth, her tongue brushing over the hardened bud and her teeth gripping it lightly. Chloe arches up into Beca’s mouth, her hands clawing desperately at Beca’s back before she manages to yank her jacket off. Beca takes the hint and pulls her shirt up over her head, Chloe impatiently leaning up to undo the younger girl’s bra. Their mouths collide in a kiss that’s more teeth and tongue than it is lips, and it’s not the best kiss Chloe’s ever had, nor the neatest, but it makes her head spin and arousal pool between her legs, so she doesn’t break it, instead brings Beca back down to her, their chests colliding, sending shockwaves through Chloe’s entire body, like her nerves have been sharpened with a knife and left raw and sensitive to even the lightest of touches. Beca mouths at her neck roughly and bites, leaving marks all along Chloe’s carotid artery that the senior knows will take weeks to disappear.

(She can’t find it in herself to care, though, because if Beca leaves tomorrow and pretends that tonight didn’t happen, then she’ll at least have temporary proof that for one night, Beca belonged to her, and she belonged to Beca.)

Beca kisses down the valley of Chloe’s breasts, down her stomach and along each of her hip bones, before she practically yanks the rest of the knit dress down her legs and disposes of it somewhere on the floor. Chloe scoots lower on the bed and slowly opens her legs, Beca’s eyes landing on the apex of her thighs where they bug out of her head in a look that says well shit because well shit, Chloe isn’t wearing any underwear. 

“Oh my God, you’re so fucking dirty,” Beca says breathily, her hands moving up and down Chloe’s inner thighs excruciatingly slowly. 

“Please,” Chloe whines and Beca can’t seem to hold out any longer, her fingers swiping through her folds and bumping her clit on the way up. Beca wastes no time in slipping two fingers inside Chloe, curling them just right as the redhead moans wantonly at the welcome stretch. Beca fucks her hard and fast into the mattress, adding a third finger and stretching Chloe to the point of pain, but she has absolutely no qualms with it, because it’s Beca, and she’d take Beca’s whole damn fist if it was what the brunette wanted. 

(Chloe pretends that the thought doesn’t make her even hotter, but it does.)

(She knows it does, but she also knows a lot of other things that she chooses to ignore.)

Chloe comes three times that night, but Beca still shakes her head at Chloe when her hands claw at her jeans, as if Chloe is a three year old who wants to play with Legos during naptime. 

Chloe wakes up in the middle of the night when a drunk frat boy comes tumbling into the room, his eyes raking up her naked body as he informs her that this is his room. Chloe rolls over to wake Beca so they can get the hell out, but she’s met with a handful of sheets.

Beca’s gone. 

Again.

Chloe gathers up her things, slips on her dress, vaguely aware that it’s backwards, and crashes on the frat house couch, tears blurring her vision as she falls asleep again. 

It doesn’t bother her. 

(It does. And any normal person would be able to tell that Beca’s behavior is bordering on disrespectful, fucking her like that and then leaving, but Chloe decides that Beca must be a little slow, because this is the second time and Chloe feels like it should mean something to both of them, but clearly it doesn’t. So she pretends it doesn’t bother her, but it does.)

(Of course it does.)

*

One Sunday night, when Chloe is laying in bed watching America’s Next Top Model on her laptop, Beca calls her. It’s the first time they’ve spoken one-on-one in almost a month, which is entirely due to Chloe avoiding her best friend in a half hearted attempt to quell her growing desire for Beca. She forgives her own actions by telling herself that Beca hasn’t made any effort to reach out to her either, but as her “The Sign” ringtone plays through the room, she feels exponential amounts of guilt. 

“Hey,” Chloe says into the phone.

“ _Hi,_ ” Beca replies quietly. “ _I haven’t seen much of you lately._ ” Chloe wants to be angry with her friend for being so impossibly oblivious, but the late-night rasp in her voice makes Chloe’s heart swell, and all of a sudden she doesn’t even remember why she was upset.

“Yeah, I’ve been studying for my Russian Lit midterm,” Chloe sighs, and it’s not a complete lie. 

(Although the day after the frat party, Chloe didn’t go to class or rehearsal because the pounding in her head was almost as painful as the thought of seeing Beca.)

“ _I should probably get on that too,_ ” Beca replies. “Well, I just wanted to make sure everything was… okay between us.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Chloe keeps her lips incredibly tight, as if she’s physically keeping the words from tumbling out. _I’m angry with you for leaving. I want you to care more about me than you do. I think I’m falling in l-_

“ _I don’t know,_ ” Beca sighs into her speaker, making a crackling sound. “ _I’ve been spending a lot more time with Jesse lately and I thought that maybe-_ ”

“You don’t get it at all, do you?” Chloe scoffs before clapping a hand over her mouth when she realizes what she’s just said. 

“ _What are you talking about?_ ”

“Nothing,” Chloe lies, wishing it was nothing, “don’t worry about it.”

“ _If you have something to say, dude, just say it,_ ” Beca’s tone reeks of frustration, even over the phone. 

Chloe weighs her options for a long minute: She could crack; tell Beca everything she’s been thinking since the day she saw her in the shower, tell her that she’s been buying outfits she’d never normally wear just to hear what Beca has to say about them, tell her that she smiles everytime Beca so much as looks at her, tell her that she has dreams about fucking her almost every night. 

But she doesn’t do that.

Instead, she does something much, much worse.

“Can you come over?”

*

The third time, they’re both sober.

This time, the roles are reversed.

This time, Beca is confused and Chloe is angry, trembling with rage directed at both herself and her best friend. 

This time, Chloe remembers every heart-wrenching detail.

This time, and probably the most important observation, Beca lets Chloe touch her. 

In fact, she practically _begs_ for Chloe to touch her. Chloe never had a chance the past two times to hear Beca, and God is there a lot to hear. “Oh God, Chloe, fuck… Shit, don’t stop Chloe, please, fuck me…” The words uttered like a mantra between hard swipes of Chloe’s tongue against Beca’s dripping heat, her hands tangled in red hair and yanking left and right. Chloe is desperate to make Beca feel something, anything, whether it be physical or emotional, she’s desperate to feel a connection flower between the two of them that’s stronger that a best friendship.

(Chloe doesn’t want Beca like a best friend. She’s way beyond that.)

Beca lets Chloe’s name fall from her lips over and over again as she comes, like a prayer said every night on your knees, like a signature catchphrase or a hymn sung at Sunday morning church. Chloe, Chloe, Chloe. Everything stops when Beca says her name, and it’s all the redhead can hear when silence lulls between them, Beca’s face, brows drawn tight together in concentration and bottom lip pulled between her teeth, the only thing she can see when her eyes flutter closed.

This time, when she wakes up, there’s an unfamiliar weight on her torso that she realizes is nothing less than Beca’s arm draped over her.

This time, Beca stays. But little did Chloe know, that Beca staying would only make things worse. 

*

Beca gets arrested.

Beca Mitchell gets in a fight with a cappella boys, accidentally chucks a trophy through a public venue’s window. And she doesn’t call Chloe. 

Chloe has to hear about it from Cynthia Rose, who heard it from Aubrey, who heard it from one of the Trebles, who heard it from Jesse. Chloe had to hear fourth over that Beca got arrested and _Jesse Fucking Swanson_ picked her up. 

“Chloe, seriously, I’m fine,” Beca insists when Chloe bombards her with questions on her way into the auditorium for rehearsal. 

“You got arrested, Beca!” Chloe grits out, finding it incredibly difficult to not scream at her best friend. “And you didn’t even call me!”

“I didn’t call you because I knew you’d act like this,” Beca relents, dropping her backpack ungracefully next to the piano. “Jesse picked me up and made Million Dollar Baby jokes, and you would’ve gone all… Chloe on me.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Chloe squares off her shoulders and crosses her arms defensively. She spots Aubrey and Jessica walking in out of the corner of her eye, but the whirlwind of emotions she’s feeling keeps her from feeling the least bit bothered about their arrival.

“It means you’re acting ridiculous, dude!” Beca runs her hands through her hair frustratedly. “You’ve been acting so weird lately, and I have no idea why!”

“Honestly, Becs, sometimes I think you might be faking this whole oblivious bit,” Chloe spits. “I mean, there’s no way someone can truly be so stupid.”

“Oh, screw you!” Beca raises her voice, stepping up closer to Chloe. “You-”

“Woah, both of you stop!” Aubrey shouts over both of them, standing between the two girls with her arms out. “I don’t know what this is about, but both of you need to knock it off. The ICCA’s are coming up sooner than we think, and we need to bring our A-game if we-”

“I don’t give a shit about the ICCA’s, Aubrey,” Chloe says, barely above a whisper. “I care about Beca right now.”

“I’m not going to let you two scream at each other in the middle of our rehearsal space,” Aubrey snaps. “Take your crap outside, talk it out, and leave it there. Don’t come back until it’s sorted out.” She pushes against Chloe’s sternum, sending her backwards through the doorway. She turns on her heel and heads outside, tears streaming down her face as she lets herself slide down the exterior wall of the auditorium. She hears the quick thud of Beca’s combat boots and braces herself for the onslaught of one of Beca’s trademark freakouts, but instead the brunette just sits cross-legged next to Chloe. The two sit in silence for awhile, Chloe unsure of how to broach the subject that’s been gnawing at her insides for months. 

“I’m sorry for not calling you after I got arrested,” Beca breaks the silence after several minutes of Chloe’s quiet crying, “but I have a feeling that’s not what this is about.”

“I’m sorry, I- I don’t know what’s g-gotten into me,” Chloe stutters, head falling into her hands. “I just… I love you so much, Beca.”

“I love you too, Chlo,” Beca supplies easily but Chloe shakes her head.

“No, I…” Chloe doesn’t know what else to say, she knows that Beca doesn’t love her the way she loves Beca, but she can’t find it within herself to correct her.

So she kisses her.

She kisses Beca, hard, and she fucks Beca up against the wall. She does her best to ignore the way Beca’s hips buck up to meet Chloe’s hand, the way Beca moans in Chloe’s ear as her fingers curl inside her, straining at the odd angle caused by Beca’s jeans. Chloe fucks her through her orgasm and pulls her fingers out only when she thinks Beca can stand up without a leg wrapped around her waist, leaving Beca blushing and panting.

“I think we should stop… whatever this is that we’ve been doing,” Beca says, obviously searching Chloe’s face for a reaction. “I don’t think it’s helping anything.” Chloe supplies a curt nod before she turns and walks back into the auditorium. She hears Beca calling after her, but the younger girl doesn’t say anything when she enters the building and finds all the Bellas gathered in a circle doing warm-ups.

Chloe sits out for the rest of rehearsal, forcing herself to stop looking at Beca and instead spends the three hours picking at her nail beds. 

(Chloe is vaguely aware that Beca is watching her, and she can’t decide how it makes her feel in the moment.)

(She later decides that it makes her happy. Obviously. It’s _Beca_.)

*

After the tragedy that is the semi-finals, Chloe and Beca don’t speak. Chloe can’t find a way to defend Beca to Aubrey without it being painfully obvious to everyone that she has favorites, so she shuts her mouth and watches Beca walk out on the Bellas. 

Chloe has her nodes surgically removed, and she finds herself wishing she had someone there to hold her hand, but she quickly realizes that she doesn’t want just _anyone_ to be there for her. 

She wants Beca.

She’s always wanted Beca, but she can’t have her, so she spends a week or so after semis wallowing in her feelings before it dawns on her that she hasn’t had sex with anyone that isn’t Beca since they met, and she decides that has to change, so she spends another two weeks sleeping with anyone and seemingly everyone. Sometimes it’s with boys, sometimes with girls; sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s not; sometimes she comes, sometimes she doesn’t. 

None of them resolve her feelings for Beca, nor do any of them come close. Chloe decides that she’ll never need to speak to Beca again, since the a cappella season is over and the freshman quit the Bellas anyway. Three more months and she’s out of here, free to do whatever it is she wants after she graduates. 

Free of Beca.

(The thought terrifies her much more than she’d like to admit. She’s spent the last six months in Beca’s company, and the thought of never seeing Beca again is incredibly unsettling.)

So when Aubrey sends her a text while she’s recovering, explaining that one of the members of the Footnotes is a high schooler and therefore the Bellas are going to the finals, Chloe feels a mix of emotions. 

The Bellas (minus Beca, of course) meet up to rehearse over spring break, and it’s easily the messiest thing Chloe has ever seen. She ends up picking a fight with Aubrey, who unsurprisingly projectile vomits amid Chloe’s senseless encouragement. In an “all self control is lost” moment, Chloe attacks Aubrey, fishing for the pitch pipe, and the two of them end up struggling under Amy until everyone comes to a halt at the sound of a familiar voice shouting. 

“Guys, stop!” Beca yells as she walks in the auditorium. “What is going on?” The group slowly comes to their feet and Aubrey snatches the pitch pipe off the ground.

“Nothing, this is a Bellas rehearsal,” Aubrey quips as Chloe rises slowly to her feet. Beca’s eyes land immediately on her, causing an annoying tingling feeling to surge through Chloe’s body.

“I know,” Beca takes a few steps forward, the apprehensiveness clear in her eyes, “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.” Chloe swears that Beca is looking right at her when she says sorry, but the moment is fleeting and Chloe can’t afford to be hanging on to ludicrous happenings. “What I did was a really dick move, and I shouldn’t have changed the set without asking you guys,” she continues, and Chloe still feels like it’s all a prelude to something else. 

(Chloe’s right. She usually is.)

“And I definitely shouldn’t have left.” Beca’s gaze meets Chloe’s in a meaningful stare, as if Beca is attempting to communicate telepathically with the redhead. “I let you-” Beca stops herself, “I let you _guys_ down, and I’m really sorry.” None of the Bellas say anything, especially not Chloe, who’s already shell shocked at just seeing Beca again, much less hearing her apologize to the group and, seemingly, to her. “And… Aubrey, if you’ll have me, I want back in.” Aubrey keeps her arms crossed defensively and stares Beca down, an eerie and thick silence settling over the rehearsal space as the two young women have a stand-off. Beca takes Aubrey’s silence as a “no” and grabs the piano chair, beginning to walk out with the metal scraping behind her. 

Chloe’s eyes dart from Aubrey’s head to Beca, as if she’s watching a ping pong match, while Beca walks impossibly slow towards the exit. She stops once and turns around, her eyes pleading with Chloe to do something. Amy is muttering Aubrey’s name under her breath, but she just looks away as Beca walks the rest of the way out, nearing the step up before she yells: “Wait!”

“Thank God, that would’ve been embarrassing.”

*

They win the ICCA’s.

The Barden Bellas win the ICCAs. 

Chloe should feel nothing but pure joy, relishing in the glory of the victory, and she does for a moment, until she sees Beca head out into the bleachers and kiss Jesse. 

They haven’t talked since Beca came back, save for a few “good lucks” and “sorry about your nodes.” Chloe doesn’t know what she would say if they did talk.

So they don’t talk. They get drunk.

Jesse heads home, leaving Beca to “celebrate with her girlfriends.” So the Bellas get drunk. Chloe knows she’s completely unreliable around both alcohol and Beca, but the two definitely don’t mix. They throw back shot after shot, sip cocktail after cocktail, until the girls drop like flies one by one. First it’s Aubrey, surprising exactly no one, then Jessica and Denise, and Cynthia Rose, who totally can’t hang. Lilly lasts longer than anyone would expect before she goes back to Donald’s hotel room, followed by Stacie and finally Amy. 

“So are you and Jesse like, a thing now?” Chloe slurs unintelligently before doing another shot.

“Chloe, we don’t have to talk about this,” Beca shakes her head.

“We’re best friends, Beca,” Chloe frowns. “Or at least we’re supposed to be. I want you to feel like you can tell me stuff.”

“I don’t know what we are,” Beca confesses quietly. “I don’t know how I feel about him. I thought I really liked him, but… I’m starting to think that I already know who I’m meant to be with.” 

Chloe can feel Beca’s sky blue gaze drilling holes in her profile, which she pointedly chooses to ignore.

(She also chooses to ignore how clear Beca’s comment is, convinced that if she lets herself acknowledge that it’s about her, Beca will suddenly retract it.)

“I say don’t label it until you know for sure,” Chloe smiles dazedly. “I mean, you’re so pretty, Becs, you could have anyone you want.”

“I don’t want ‘anyone’ right now, Chloe,” Beca takes a deep breath and swallows hard before continuing, “I want you.”

*

After the fifth time, Chloe just stops counting. 

She doesn’t stop recounting everything that happens, but she does stop keeping track of how many times it’s happened. 

Chloe doesn’t stop fucking Beca anywhere and everywhere she can, she doesn’t stop buying clothes that she’d never wear just because she thinks Beca will like them, and she certainly doesn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to wake up next to Beca every morning.

(Sometimes Beca stays, sometimes she doesn’t, but they never talk about it regardless.)

(There are some things, Chloe has realized, that they just don’t talk about.)

*

Chloe fails Russian Literature.

Chloe doesn’t graduate.

She sees it as both a blessing and a curse, a blessing because she has another year with the Bellas, but a curse because that extra year is without her one constant in life: Aubrey.

She doesn’t quite understand why she fails; she did a decent amount of classwork and showed up to about half of the lectures, but she did fall asleep during the exam and had to resort to bubbling in A-C-A over and over again.

(Deep down, Chloe knows exactly why she failed: she did classwork as quickly as possible in order to go see Beca, she missed morning lectures due to being with Beca, the classes she did attend were filled with thoughts of Beca or texting Beca, and she fell asleep during her exam because she stayed up all the night before eating Beca out like she was a five-course meal.)

(When she calls Aubrey and her friend asks her ‘how this could happen,’ she simply tells her that she sucks at Russian Lit.)

Her parents are disappointed, but not so much that they make her feel terrible about it, and the decision to return to Barden in the fall as a super-senior is easy for Chloe. She needs a degree, and she needs to pass Russian Literature in order to get that degree, so she braves the quad on the first day of school. 

(Chloe avoids talking to the Bellas, save for Aubrey, all summer. If Beca knows she didn’t graduate, it’s because someone else told her.)

As she walks through the quad during the activities fair, her eyes find Beca and Amy standing behind the Bellas’ booth, handing out pamphlets to the crowd of girls in front of them. Chloe sneaks behind the booth and places both hands over Beca’s eyes, allowing the now-sophomore to freak out a little before she removes them.

“Chloe?” Beca gasps. “What are you doing here?” She doesn’t give Chloe a chance to respond before she tackles her in a bone-crushing hug, one that causes the caged butterflies in Chloe’s stomach to erupt in a nervous and excited frenzy.

“I, uh… I failed Russian Lit,” she says as they break apart, chewing on her bottom lip. “I didn’t graduate.”

“Wait, so you’re back?” Amy interjects. “Hell yeah! Bloe is back together!” Amy saunters off to put on a show for the Bella hopefuls, eyes full of first-day excitement and intimidation as they watch Amy make an ass of herself.

(Chloe remembers exactly how it feels to look at someone like that. Not from her first day of college four years ago, but from last year. The first time she saw Beca.)

(And every time after that.)

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Beca frowns, clearly not as happy about the news as Amy.

“I didn’t know until I asked about why I didn’t get my diploma in the mail,” Chloe shrugs. “They told me they’d sent a bunch of emails about me flunking out, but I just never checked.”

“Oh, Chloe,” Beca sighs and the pity in her voice feels like a knife in the gut, but Chloe lets herself fall into Beca’s tight embrace, one that is full of solace and comfort. She breathes in the scent of Beca, woodsy and vaguely of cinnamon, the way her mother’s kitchen smells after baking a batch of gingersnap cookies. 

(Chloe pretends that Beca’s arms don’t feel like home. She pretends that the urge to beg Beca to never become a stranger isn’t making her tremble.)

“It’s okay,” Chloe sniffles. I get to spend another year with you, she almost says.“I get to spend another year with the Bellas.”

“Dude, if I had known you were coming back, I would’ve-” Beca stops herself and shakes her head, leaving Chloe silently screaming for her to finish her sentence. “I’m glad you’re back. You can captain the Bellas instead of me and Amy.”

“How about you and I do it?” Chloe offers and Beca just smiles, taking the redhead’s hand and giving it a squeeze. 

Chloe likes to think that she knows Beca’s face better than anyone.

She knows when her smile is fake, she knows when Beca wants to say something but is biting her tongue, she knows when she’s truly happy, or uncomfortable, or turned on.

Chloe knows every face, every look that Beca has, but she’s never seen this one before.

Beca’s clear blue eyes are staring into hers full of an indecipherable emotion, fleeting and unclear, before they glaze over in a dorky smile. 

(Chloe doesn’t let herself believe that Beca has feelings for her. ‘Cause if Beca doesn’t, then Chloe’s terrified of how it’ll make her feel.) 

(She’s terrified of how high she is with Beca, and how long of a drop it is to go down.)

*

It doesn’t take long for Chloe to be rudely reminded that Beca is in a relationship with Jesse. Now that Aubrey and Bumper are both gone, the Bellas start spending a lot more time with the Treblemakers. Normally, Chloe would be ecstatic at the thought of hanging out with people who love a cappella as much as she does, but Beca is sitting on Jesse’s lap at their weekly game night, hosted this week at the Bellas’ new house, and Chloe finds herself buried in a bottle of scotch that she doesn’t even remember opening.

Beca’s wearing skinny jeans and a tight top, her signature leather jacket and usual eyeliner, but for some reason, Chloe catches herself drooling at the sight of her best friend more times than is acceptable. Every time Beca wins a hand of poker, Jesse pulls her a little closer to him, his hands resting politely on her hips, and the sight of it makes Chloe want to scream. When the Trebles decide to head out, Beca kisses Jesse languidly and Chloe audibly growls from where she stands in the kitchen.

“You good, Chloe?” Amy slurs drunkenly. Chloe’s eyes never falter from the couple, and it doesn’t take long for Amy to follow her gaze to them. “Chill out, Red, we wouldn’t want anyone finding out you’re in love with her.” Chloe’s eyes bug out of her head at Amy’s nonchalant mention of what she thought wasn’t common knowledge.

“Amy, I’m not-”

“Girl, come on!” Amy rolls her eyes. “It’s totally obvious.”

“I’m just… She’s so…” Chloe searches for the words to explain how she feels about Beca, but she can’t seem to find them in her drunken haze.

(Chloe loves Beca the way you love the boy who’s lived next door for a decade, that you’ve played basketball with and rode bikes with. Chloe loves Beca the way you love your first kiss, for braving the waters with you and staying with you while you cry over your pet’s death. Chloe loves Beca the way you love your best friend for holding your hair back while you throw up, and for visiting your family over the holidays, and for telling you that ‘yeah, that mole is normal,’ and that the guy you just dumped didn’t deserve you anyway.)

(Chloe loves Beca the way she loves the rain simply because she knows it might leave a rainbow in its wake. Chloe loves Beca the way she loves her mother for supporting her, and her teachers for educating her, and her friends for laughing with her instead of at her. Chloe loves Beca the way she loves staring at the sky at night, counting constellations and wishing on shooting stars that she knows are just airplanes but it doesn’t matter because she loves the thought of it.)

(Chloe just loves Beca. She loves the way Beca smiles at her, her tongue peeking out between her teeth just barely, and she loves the way Beca sings to her and with her; she loves the way Beca smells, and she loves the way Beca feels like the human embodiment of the eye of the storm, calm and consistent while everything around her is in absolute shambles. She loves the way Beca says her name, soft and sweet to get her attention, or loud and melodically as she tumbles over the edge at Chloe’s doing.)

(She loves Beca.)

(That much she knows.)

*

It doesn’t happen again for months. 

Chloe concentrates on her Russian Lit midterm, which she gets a high B on by some miracle.

(Chloe went to every lecture, but she spent the entirety of every single one seething over whatever stupid selfie Jesse had posted with Beca on Instagram that day.)

(She deletes her Instagram for that very reason, but she’ll tell anyone who asks that she needs a break from the drags of social media.)

She leaves Beca to do her own thing, whatever that may be. They banter and dish gossip like best friends do, but it’s only during rehearsals when other people are around.

So when there’s a knock at Chloe’s door past midnight on a Friday, she’s expecting it to be Stacie and some guy attempting to use her room to have sex, or Lilly muttering something under her breath before turning around and leaving.

“Come in,” she says without looking up from her book. She hears the shuffle of feet and a sniffle, immediately making her clap her book shut and look up at the door.

Beca stands a few feet out of the doorway, tears in her eyes, red-faced and disheveled. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why Beca looks like this, but the brunette says it anyway:

“Jesse and I had a fight.”

Chloe isn’t surprised by it, but she is surprised that Beca decided to mention Jesse in conversation to her. 

(They haven’t talked about Jesse since last year’s ICCA’s, and Chloe is painfully aware of that fact.) 

Chloe barely has a chance to ask what happened before Beca is climbing onto her lap, throwing her legs on either side of Chloe’s thighs. Her hands tangle in Chloe’s hair, swaying unsteadily overtop of her. 

“Beca, what are you doing?” Chloe gulps.

(The question is a formality. Chloe knows exactly what Beca is doing, she just doesn’t know why.)

“I miss you,” Beca says as if it’s the answer to Chloe’s question, or any question she may have asked. Her thumbs glide along the line of Chloe’s jaw while Chloe’s hands physically twitch in longing to be on Beca’s hips, legs, face, God, anywhere. It’s been so long since Chloe touched Beca, since the night of the ICCA’s, and she knows it’s wrong but it feels so far from wrong that she can’t be blamed for the way she leans up to kiss her best friend. 

Chloe can’t be blamed for homewrecking Jesse and Beca, the a cappella power couple, because Beca’s in her room, on top of her, grinding her hips into one of Chloe’s thighs while she bites at Chloe’s neck.

Chloe can’t be blamed for assisting in Beca’s infidelity because Beca is begging for it, nothing but “please Chloe, I need you, fuck me Chlo, oh God, yes.” Chloe grabs Beca by her hips and pulls her off her lap, pinning her down on the bed and pressing her flexed thigh against Beca’s center. 

“You make me fucking crazy,” Chloe growls into Beca’s ear. “God, sometimes I hate you for making me feel like this.” Beca doesn’t say anything, just moans, arches her back so that her clothed chest meets Chloe’s, who ends up tugging both of their shirts over their heads. Chloe unhooks Beca’s bra and fastens her mouth to one of her breasts in one fell swoop, a strangled gasp falling from Beca’s lips. Chloe’s leg is still in between Beca’s, pressing up at irregular intervals, never letting Beca get too close to the edge. Beca begs rhythmically into her ear until she relents, the movement becoming Beca’s responsibility as she grinds down on Chloe’s leg, chasing her orgasm with reckless abandon until something causes both women to still.

Beca’s phone is ringing.

It’s playing through Chloe’s room, buzzing frantically on Chloe’s bedside table. The redhead leans up and over, scowling at the caller ID.

“It’s Jesse, isn’t it?” Beca infers. “I need to answer it,” she moves to sit up but Chloe surprises both of them by pinning both of Beca’s wrists above her head.

“No you don’t,” she growls lowly. 

Jesse doesn’t stop calling, and Beca continues to plead with Chloe to let her answer until Chloe’s tongue is swiping through her folds and she seems to forget that her phone ever rang. 

(Chloe knows she should feel guilty, but she doesn’t.)

(She feels empowered, and evil, and dirty, but not guilty, especially not when her name falls from Beca’s lips over and over as she comes.)

*

Beca’s not there when Chloe wakes up.

Chloe doesn’t speak to her for a week.

Beca and Jesse work it out.

Chloe gets drunk.

Beca and Jesse fight.

Chloe fucks Beca into the mattress, or the counter, or the floor.

Beca never stays.

That’s just how it goes.

Chloe hates it.

(She doesn’t really. Because it’s Beca.)

(And she could never hate Beca.)

*

They win the ICCA’s. Again.

Chloe fails Russian Lit. Again.

Chloe doesn’t graduate. Again. 

This time, she calls Beca as soon as she gets the email from the Dean of Students. Beca tells her that it’s okay to be upset, and it’s okay to cry, but Chloe has no reason to cry.

After Beca crawled into bed with her the night before her Russian Lit final, mumbling that she couldn’t imagine the Bellas without Chloe and she didn’t want her to leave, in Chloe’s mind, the choice was made for her. Her heart did the work, or rather _didn’t_ do the work, and her head was left at home when she left for her lecture room in the morning. She left her brain with Beca, who was still tangled up in her sheets, and let her feelings for her best friend take her exam.

Evidently, her feelings for Beca know nothing about Leo Tolstoy.

So Chloe returns for yet another year of super-senior dom, another year of staring at Beca as she does literally anything, another year of pretending she’s not in love with Beca Mitchell.

(She doesn’t have to pretend in front of Amy, and that fact means Chloe can cry on Amy’s shoulder anytime Jesse gets a little too close to Beca, or she snaps at Chloe for something the redhead didn’t realize she was even doing.)

(Amy becomes a source of comfort for her. Although she figures that by winter break, all the Bellas have figured out that Chloe always leaves her time with Amy a little drunker than she’d ever get by herself. She figures that Beca must notice too.)

By the time the Bellas part ways for winter break, Chloe is convinced that whatever it is that’s been happening between her and Beca is over. When she’s not with Jesse, she’s texting him, or talking about him, or thinking about him. Chloe finds that listening to her say “Jesse this” and “Jesse that” is more painful than shooting nails into her ear canals.

(Chloe doesn’t know what that would feel like, but she imagines that it’s pretty fucking awful, and it still doesn’t compare to the way her eardrums explode at the sound of Beca saying his name instead of hers.)

They haven’t hooked up since the summer, when Beca came to visit Chloe at home while her and Jesse were “on a break,” spending almost all three days in Chloe’s bed, barely sleeping more than ten hours out of the seventy-two they spent together.

Since school started, Beca’s made a habit of entering Chloe’s room at night and inviting herself under the covers, her arms wrapping around Chloe’s waist as her face burrows into the older girl’s neck.

(Sometimes Chloe rolls over and they talk for hours about everything and nothing, except what they should be talking about, and sometimes Chloe doesn’t budge, but the feeling of Beca’s skin against hers always wakes her up, and she rarely manages to go back to sleep.)

(The night before the Bellas part ways for the break, Beca slips into Chloe’s room and then into her bed. Chloe turns around to face the brunette, so close that their noses are touching, and Chloe will deny to her grave that she leans in but somehow they end up kissing slowly, surely, the redhead pouring every ounce of feeling into it without saying anything. They lay there facing each other, kissing in the dark, until the sun begins to peek out from the horizon and light fills the room in rows through the slats of Chloe’s blinds.)

(And yet, Chloe still thinks that whatever shred of feeling Beca once felt towards her is gone now.)

(Clearly, Chloe needs glasses.)

Chloe doesn’t go home for break.

Instead, she goes to see Aubrey. She decides as the wheels of the plane touch the tarmac that this time will be different than all the other times she’s seen Aubrey since the blonde graduated.

This time, she’ll tell Aubrey everything.

*

She starts the story over dinner. Aubrey made some fancy pasta dish for the both of them and went all out on the place setting of her dining room table, and Chloe feels bad spoiling such a nice evening, but she made the mistake of mentioning to Aubrey that she had something to tell her, and now her friend will not drop it.

“I’m in love with Beca,” Chloe blurts out as Aubrey sips her wine, having just finished detailing her job at The Lodge at Fallen Leaves. Aubrey chokes on her wine and spirals into a coughing fit, causing Chloe to wince and apologize quietly.

“I’m sorry, I think I misheard you,” Aubrey places her hand on her chest. “I could’ve sworn you said you’re in love with Beca.”

“Yeah,” Chloe nods and Aubrey’s eyes get impossibly wider.

“You’re joking, right? This has to be a joke!”

“I feel like you’re being sarcastic,” Chloe shakes her head incredulously. “Amy told me that I look at Beca like, and I quote, ‘a gazelle that’s just been shot in the leg by a hunter but is still limping along the plains because there’s a nice patch of grass a ways away.’”

“That… doesn’t make any sense,” Aubrey mutters. “But wait, no, I’m being serious.”

“Oh, then yeah, I’m in love with Beca. Part of me thinks I always have been, in a way,” Chloe shrugs.

“But she’s with Jesse,” Aubrey thinks aloud, “so you two have never…”

“Oh, uh… We have,” Chloe blushes furiously.

“Oh my goodness, Chloe Beale, you _cheated_?”

“No!” Chloe replies quickly. “No, we never did anything while they were together, really… Only before, and when they were fighting.”

“But they weren’t broken up,” Aubrey infers with a critical eyebrow raised.

“Not exactly, no,” Chloe sighs, the weight of what her and Beca have been doing for the past two years finally hitting her. “But it hasn’t happened since the summer, her and Jesse are good now.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“Yeah, I am.”

(Chloe is the furthest thing from okay with that. But she figures that Aubrey can wait a little while for that can of worms.)

*

“You can’t fail Russian Literature again, Chloe,” Aubrey says as the two young women lay on Aubrey’s bed and stare at the ceiling again. “You have to graduate, get out into the world, away from Beca.”

“I feel like, if left to my own devices, I’ll never make it out of there,” Chloe sniffles. “I mean, if I fail again, it’ll be no one’s fault but mine.”

“If you think about it, this whole thing is Beca’s fault,” Aubrey observes. She’s got the whole story now, and although she may have interrupted a dozen times to make rude remarks and judgements, she still wrapped Chloe in a hug at the end and told her it was all going to be okay.

“What, it’s her fault that I fell in love with her?” Chloe asks.

“No,” Aubrey replies quietly, her expression unreadable in thought. “You know how much I hate If/Then expressions, but… If Beca had never kissed Jesse after the ICCA’s, they most likely wouldn’t be together, because we both know Jesse wouldn’t have had the balls to ask Beca out. So if she’d never kissed him, then she would’ve kissed you, and you would have graduated, and she’d be with you on her junior year winter break instead of, well, wherever she is now.”

Chloe’s at a loss for words, so she shuts her mouth and leans her head on Aubrey’s stomach, whispering a quiet “thank you” before falling asleep with Aubrey’s fingers playing with her hair, her chest feeling just a little lighter.

*

Chloe promises Aubrey that she’ll talk to Beca before spring break.

She promises to tell Beca everything, how she feels about her and what she wants to do about it (that much Aubrey left up to Chloe).

The thought terrifies her, but she swears she’ll do it.

Beca texts her the day after Chloe gets back to the Bellas’ house, asking her to pick her up from the train station since Jesse is still out of town. She replies immediately.

_I’m on my way._

*

Chloe doesn’t tell Beca.

She can’t.

She stays at Barden for spring break, cleaning every inch of the house and ignoring Aubrey’s calls all two weeks of vacation.

At first, Beca sends her the occasional beach snapchat, and she replies to them as long as Jesse is nowhere to be seen in the photo.

The selfies she sends of the two of them, though, go unanswered.

(Beca gets the hint and stops sending them. Chloe can’t help but feel a little guilty.)

Chloe’s the only one in the house after two days of break, Jessica and Ashley having been in and out for a couple of days early on. For the most part, the house is silent.

Chloe knew it’d be like this, and she stayed anyway, thinking it would make her feel better, but it only makes her more aware that Beca is decidedly not here, and she is evidently with Jesse, who is and has been her boyfriend for almost three years.

Chloe gets drunk alone every night and goes through old photos of her and Beca, from all of their competitions together, from their group trip to the waterpark, from one late night in Chloe’s room watching Gossip Girl. Chloe cries a lot those two weeks, and she throws her phone against the wall more times than she’s willing to admit.

She thinks about dropping out, thinks about killing Beca, or killing Jesse, or even herself, but the thought of Aubrey and the Bellas at her funeral is enough to make her banish that thought in about three seconds.

Chloe packs a bag of her baggage.

She fills a duffel bag with every article of clothing she’s ever bought for Beca’s eyes, every printed picture that Beca’s in, every letter Beca’s written her and slid under her door when she was in a dorky mood. She lays the awful 2013 sunglasses from New Year’s Eve on top of everything else, forcing herself to forget what Beca said to her that day two and a half years ago.

(“You know, I’m so glad we met,” Beca said as she chucked beer can after beer can into the large recycling bin. There was glitter in her hair and on the floor after the party, candle wax on the hardwood floors of the frat house they were in no way obliged to clean up. Chloe wanted Beca to be hers when the clock struck midnight, she wanted to jump forward into a new year with Beca’s hand in hers. But she kissed Tom, and Beca kissed a tipsy Aubrey on the cheek, and Chloe cleaned up bottles with her on New Year’s Day, hoping that one day, she’d have Beca at midnight.)

Chloe lugs the bag down the stairs on the last day of break, taking it outside to the front yard fire pit. She douses the bag in lighter fluid and throws a match overtop, igniting everything that weighed her down for three years. She watches it burn with a faint smile until she hears a car pull up. Chloe really does feel good about what she did, until she sees Beca step out of the car with a beaming smile on her face that slowly fades when she approaches the fire, images of the Bellas after competitions and “Bechloe selfies” clear through the flames.

It’s in this moment, when Beca locks eyes with Chloe, that the super-senior can see everything the blue eyes have to offer.

She sees the confusion, the hurt, the apprehension and the disappointment, but through it all, she sees the love that’s always been behind Beca’s eyes.

Beca loves Chloe.

And Chloe can see it now, just seconds too late.

But this is Beca and Chloe, and nothing comes easy, so Beca brushes past her and heads up to the attic, and doesn’t so much as look at Chloe until after the ICCA’s.

*

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what happens next.

Chloe doesn’t pass Russian Literature.

In fact, she doesn’t even show up for the final.

None of the Bellas can convince her to get out of bed the morning of, and Chloe tells herself that if Beca comes down and tells her to go, then she will.

Needless to say, Beca never comes down, so Chloe doesn’t go.

She doesn’t graduate, and she re-enrolls for her seventh year at Barden almost immediately after receiving the anticipated email.

Aubrey is the first to confront Chloe about the “ridiculous funk” she’s been in since spring break. The other Bellas, save for Amy, who has some sort of a clue, don’t know anything other than the fact that Beca and Chloe had some sort of falling out, but Aubrey knows better.

So when Chloe goes home for the summer with plans to stay in bed all day and night eating her body weight in junk food and watching Project Runway, Aubrey follows closely behind her. She stays at the hotel down the street from Chloe’s parents’ house, showing up at Chloe’s house every day of summer break.

Sometimes Chloe acknowledges Aubrey’s existence, whether just with an emotionless “hey” or by patting the edge of her bed and falling into Aubrey’s arms with a sob.

Other times she sleeps through the whole day while Aubrey watches from the wicker chair in the corner of Chloe’s childhood room, or while Aubrey holds her in her arms and plays with her hair.

They never talk about anything, though. There are certain things that Aubrey is sure to never bring up, including but not limited to: Beca, Beca’s relationship with Jesse, Chloe’s “fight” with Beca (which, funnily enough to Chloe, included no actual _words_ , much less any arguing, punches or kicks), the Bellas, Barden, and Chloe failing Russian Literature an arguably pathetic number of times.

(Chloe doesn’t see, rationally, how it’s possible to fail the same class that many times. She’s sure that everyone in her life is thinking the same thing.)

“Chloe, you need to shower,” Aubrey says one July afternoon. “It’s been a week since you even got out of bed.” Chloe just burrows her head further under the covers, mumbling an “I don’t want to” into the pillow. She yelps when she feels Aubrey’s arms snake under her body and lift her up, carrying her with seemingly little effort into the bathroom and dropping her carefully in the running shower. All it does is remind Chloe of the time last summer when she fucked Beca up against these tiles, and her head swims with agonizing reminders as the water mixes with her tears. Chloe realizes that she’s still wearing her shorts and sports bra, and she’s so lost in her own self-pity that she can’t even be bothered to take them off.

(Chloe is sitting against the wall of her shower sobbing, cold water beating down on her clothed skin, while Aubrey watches her sadly through a gap in the curtain.)

(This is a new low for her, and she’s suddenly painfully aware that this is rock bottom. Aubrey seems to catch her realization as it occurs.)

“The good news is, Chlo, there’s nowhere to go but up.”

*

With Aubrey’s help, Chloe gets her shit together.

They make a plan on how to handle Beca, and it basically consists of limiting contact with the now-senior as much as possible.

Aubrey’s last day with Chloe is incredibly hard, filled with waterfalls of salty tears and too many goodbye hugs, and Chloe drives back from the airport with tears in her eyes.

(She puts on the radio to distract herself, and Don’t You [Forget About Me] comes on. Chloe doesn’t turn it off. She lets the whole song play, and she even sings along, but she can’t bring herself to throw a fist up at the end. Regardless, she still sees that as progress.)

Chloe’s, hopefully, last first day of school goes about as well as she could expect, and Beca doesn’t look surprised to see her at rehearsal, so someone obviously informed her of Chloe’s inevitable return. Chloe expects a more titular reunion, filled with stop-motion movements and tearful greetings, but all the Bellas simply nod their heads at each other and go about rehearsal.

*

There’s a kind of deflation in the group that Chloe definitely didn’t see coming, and Beca’s more checked out than she’s ever been.

It’s not Chloe’s place to say anything, but none of the girls are willing to do it themselves, so Beca goes on half-assing her role in the group. After the embarrassment at the Kennedy Center, the Barden Bellas are forced to meet with the Dean of Student Affairs, and the girls are waiting outside his office quietly while Chloe paces the floor.

“Chloe, chill out, it was a mistake, they’re not going to burn us for witchcraft,” Beca calls out to her monotonously. It’s the first time Beca has spoken directly to her since spring break last year, and it’s enough to almost cause Chloe to trip over her own feet.

“No, but the National A Cappella Association is in there talking to the Dean about us, and who knows what’s going to happen,” Chloe says unevenly.

“We’ve won three national championships, whatever happens in there, we’re gonna be fine,” Beca admonishes with no trace of emotion in her voice. “Maybe it’s time to… think about other stuff.” The statement feels directed at Chloe, and so much so that the redhead stills and faces Beca, a blazing look in her eyes.

“What other stuff?”

“You know, school, jobs, life,” Beca’s voice gets smaller after every word, and she physically shrinks into her chair, but Chloe still sees it as a threat.

(She can’t shake the feeling that Beca is talking to her about her. That’s one of many mistakes she’s made.)

“This group is my life,” Chloe resumes her pacing, hands resting on her hips. “I’ve intentionally failed Russian Lit three times so I could be a Bella. This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to us.”

(Chloe knows damn well that none of that statement was factually accurate. She intentionally failed Russian Lit three times so that she could stay with Beca, and the worst thing that’s ever happened to her, in Chloe’s opinion, is losing Beca.)

(This is the most interaction she’s had with Beca in six months, and she wants to feel nothing, or even feel negatively about it, but she doesn’t.)

(She loves it. Because, as always, it’s _Beca_.)

*

The Bellas get suspended.

They get suspended from performing or competing at any a cappella event, but Beca cuts a deal to allow the Bellas to compete at the World Championships, a win guaranteeing them reinstatement.

This is, decidedly, Chloe’s last year as a Bella, along with the entirety of the group, and since Beca has been all over the place, the redhead feels like the weight of the Bella legacy is on her shoulders.

Chloe needs this win.

She needs the Worlds to be her swan song.

*

A legacy shows up at the Barden house asking to audition, and even though she keeps her eyes closed the whole time and has a nervous energy radiating off of her, Chloe smiles a little at the prospect of having new blood.

Emily Junk is a bright eyed freshman who’s determined to make her mark on the Bellas in a way that furthers from her being a legacy. Chloe would normally find the whole thing inspiring, but she just doesn’t have the time or energy to care.

(Chloe knows that there’s something different about her, but if she thinks about it, there’s no one there to really notice.)

(Aubrey is gone, Beca probably hates her, and the other Bellas are all in their own worlds.)

(It’s just Chloe, and Chloe has to win Worlds. So naturally, she expresses that sentiment onto the group.)

So, under Chloe’s leadership, the ten girls travel to their new German rivals’ performance at a car show, and Chloe decides there is not one good thing that comes out of the experience.

Chloe has to watch Beca make an ass of herself due to her attraction to the female captain of Das Sound Machine, a blonde named Kommissar.

(Chloe doesn’t even think she’s that attractive. Maybe if you’d asked her four years ago, she would’ve told you that she’d pay to be stepped on by the German, but now, she has more of a thing for brunettes.)

Das Sound Machine is good.

_Really_ freaking good.

Seeing them perform only makes Chloe more driven towards winning, and it seemingly only distracts Beca more.

They spend way too long practicing extravagant choreography and doing senseless stunts because they have no tracks to sing. Chloe spots Emily approach Beca about that very topic, but the newbie doesn’t seem to be getting through to her, so Chloe swallows her pride (and the lump in her throat) and brings it up herself.

“Yeah, Bec, we’re gonna need that set ASAP so we can start nailing down the choreography,” Chloe mentions as nicely as she can while she grabs her bag off the piano bench.

“Right on top of that, Chlo,” Beca says immediately and Chloe tenses, writing it off as a knee-jerk reaction and walking away after a nonchalant “awes.”

She doesn’t know what else to say to Beca, but on the bright side, her heart doesn’t flutter at the use of the nickname.

(Chloe instead has to physically restrain herself from breaking down into tears in the middle of their rehearsal space, figuring that would only make things worse.)

Needless to say, Beca doesn’t nail down the set.

They decide on a hodge-podge combination of songs for a performance at some convention they were invited to.

(In a fleeting thought, Chloe wonders how they got the gig in the first place if the Bellas are suspended. She doesn’t let that thought linger for too long.)

*

The performance is a disaster, surprising no one.

Cynthia Rose catches on fire, Flo’s back-handspring series goes tragically awry, and Amy does no good to anyone by jumping on CR and practically suffocating her while the rest of the Bellas stand with looks of horror and shame bestowed on their faces.

On the bus ride back, Chloe gets a text from Aubrey asking how she’s doing, and Chloe gets an idea.

“Ladies, we’re going on a retreat.”

*

When they arrive at The Lodge at Fallen Leaves, Aubrey becomes the center of a huge group hug, smiling quickly at all of the Bellas except for Beca. She pulls Chloe aside, quickly giving her a look that says “are you okay,” and Chloe gives her one back that says “yes.”

(That may not be exactly true, but she figures fake it ‘till you make it is the best policy right now.)

Aubrey leaves Chloe with a curt nod before she starts barking order at the girls like a drill sergeant, explaining the rules of the retreat and how the next two days are going to go. Amy is less than impressed at the prospect of sleeping in a tent, but the other girls don’t seem all that bothered by it.

That night, Chloe goes for a walk throughout the camp. It’s been a long time since she was truly by herself and took time to stroll in silence, so she’s gone for awhile, thinking about everything she’s done and everything that’s happened to her over the past three years. It’s strange for Chloe to think about the fact that she’s turning twenty-five in three months, and she’ll be graduating (hopefully) in two, and all of the Bellas, save for Emily, will be graduating with her.

She’ll be graduating with Beca.

(Chloe has had this dream several times, but it always ends with the two young women throwing their caps into the air and kissing as they fall back down, Amy or Stacie snapping a picture of the two of them embracing. Beca always snatches the phone and tries to put a filter on it, but Chloe never lets her, because why put something in black and white that was destined to be in color?)

(But now, in the dead of night under the cool shade of the trees, Chloe knows that will never happen. The Worlds are just after graduation, and Chloe can’t afford to let her priorities shift. She’s been working all year to stay sane and shake Beca from her system, and she doesn’t need a relapse.)

(Unfortunately, Chloe Beale is not that sane. So she grabs her flask from her back pocket and drinks the tequila in slow bursts, letting it flood all of her senses before she returns slowly to the tent.)

Of course, the only space in the tent is between Beca and Emily. Emily’s holding a book over her head that she lowers when she catches sight of Chloe, patting the space next to her excitedly.

Beca, on the other hand, is staring at the ceiling.

Chloe doesn’t even bother changing out of her yoga pants and tank top before she weasels her way between the legacy and her ex-best friend, turning to face Beca for no good reason, other than the fact that she’s drunk.

“What are we doing?” Beca whisper-yells at Chloe, and it takes the redhead’s inebriated mind a moment to understand that Beca is referring to what they’re doing on the retreat, not what Chloe and Beca are doing right now, or what they have been doing since Beca’s freshman year.

“We’re bonding,” she supplies easily. “You seem tense. Do you need a back rub?” Chloe has lost all chill at this point, but she can’t even find it within herself to care. She places a hand on Beca’s forehead and begins to play with her hair before the brunette quickly shys away from the touch.

“Several body parts are rubbing my back right now, thank you.” Her sour expression never falters, and it makes Chloe a little bit sad, but mostly it makes her want to close the distance between their lips and just go to fucking town-

(Bad idea, Chloe. _Very_ bad idea.)

(She doesn’t kiss Beca. She does something else, an equally bad, if not worse, idea.)

“You know Beca, we’re very close, but I feel like this retreat is really gonna let us discover everything about each other,” she slurs her words a little.

“Is that right?” Beca asks and Chloe just nods.

“You know, one of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t do enough experimenting in college,” Chloe hums.

(That doesn’t even make sense, and Chloe knows it. She has hooked up with half of Barden University, and she’s seen pretty much everything there is to see.)

(Most importantly, she’s seen Beca.)

“You are so weird,” Beca shakes her head and rolls away from Chloe. She can’t help but smile at the bantering turn the conversation took, despite her nonsensical talk of college experimentation and strange massage offerings.

Chloe falls asleep more content than she has in a long time, and for once, she has Beca to thank for it.

*

“Up and at ‘em, Bellas!” Aubrey shouts way too loudly and way too early for Chloe’s liking. The throb between her temples is certainly due to the unwise decision she made to drink last night, but she still manages to hustle out of the tent and smile on her way in line.

“Today, we are going back to the basics to relearn how to sing as a group, while also enduring death-defying team building exercises!” Aubrey says cheerfully.

(Chloe’s surprised she hasn’t gotten whiplash from Aubrey’s sudden mood changes.)

“What a great idea,” Chloe smiles and nods. She doesn’t really think it’s a great idea, but it’s their only shot at winning the Worlds, so she’ll take her chances.

Aubrey spends the day forcing the girls to sing Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy and Lady Marmalade all while shoving each other through ropes, belly crawling through mud baths, and ziplining across the lake.

By the end of it, the Bellas are dirty, exhausted, and completely over the whole thing, and they still end up bickering with each other.

In fact, bickering is perhaps the understatement of the year.

“I’m sorry, but what are we doing?” Beca asks in a huff.

“We’re rediscovering our sound,” Chloe replies, and Aubrey nods in agreement.

“Are we? ‘Cause it feels like we’re just singing songs that would never go in our set.”

“Beca, come on,” Chloe admonishes.

“No,” Beca stops her. “None of us know how to beat Das Sound Machine but I _know_ it’s not going to be by doing this.”

“This is just an exercise in finding harmony, Beca,” Aubrey states diplomatically. “Sometimes you have to break things down before you build them back up again.”

“I’ve got more important things to do!” Beca raises her voice.

“What could be more important this?” Chloe gapes.

“Nothing,” Beca shakes her head, “forget it.”

“No!” Chloe shouts, fed up with Beca’s attitude. “You don’t think we haven’t all realized you’ve been a little checked out lately?”

“Come on Beca, just tell her,” Amy pats Beca on the shoulder and Chloe’s brain feels like it’s going to explode from how much she seems to be missing.

“I heard that. Tell me what?”

“Oh, you misunderstood me, I clearly said ‘Rum pum Crooka, trush snella,” Amy interjects weakly. “Listen, I don’t want you guys to fight, you’re Beca and Chloe. Together you’re Bloe, and everybody loves a good Bloe.” Chloe feels a pang of hurt in her chest at Amy’s words, and knowing full well that she’s not serious, she still locks eyes with the Australian briefly and takes in the apology clear in Amy’s eyes.

“Okay,” Beca turns to face Chloe again. “I’ve been interning at a recording studio and a legit music producer wants to hear my work, but God forbid I have something going on outside this group.”

Chloe can’t say she’s entirely surprised at Beca’s confession. She knew this was inevitable, that a cappella wasn’t Beca’s dream, that producing music was. So hearing that the girl jumped at an opportunity to pursue her dream isn’t all that jarring to Chloe.

She’s just hurt that Beca never told her.

“Okay, so why would you keep something like that from us?” Chloe asks.

(She almost says “me,” but she decides against it at the last second. She thinks it’s better if it stays relatively impersonal.)

(Chloe did not see the rest coming.)

“Because you’re obsessed, you all are!” Beca turns to look at the rest of the Bellas. “We’re graduating, and the only person thinking about life after the Bellas is me.”

Chloe hates it, but Beca has a point. She’s been so caught up in winning the World Championships and saving the Bella name that she hasn’t given her future a second of thought.

(She’s been so consumed with getting over Beca and getting away from Beca that she has no idea where she’s going to go afterwards.)

“What is so wrong with being focused on the Bellas?” Chloe feels the need to defend herself from Beca, even though it was a blanket statement. “This has been my family for seven years.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re too scared to leave! Sack up, dude!” Beca shouts in Chloe’s face.

“Okay, so you’ve been lying to us for the entire year and now you’re just gonna flake out?” Chloe feels the need to push the blame back onto Beca.

(In reality, Chloe would rather not think about how afraid she is and was to leave Barden behind. To leave _Beca_ behind.)

“Now you’re gonna flake out, when the Worlds is, like right after graduation?” Chloe continues, her arms flailing and moving nervously.

“Oh my God, enough about the Worlds!” Beca throws her hands up. “I can’t do it, I’m out of here.”

“Oh, so you’re just gonna leave now?” Chloe crosses her arms.

“We all have to eventually Chloe, it might as well be now! If you all knew what was good for you you’d-” she turns and walks off into a clearing marked with signage while all of the Bellas call out to her, but she doesn’t listen and Chloe blinks and all of a sudden Beca’s in a net thirty feet off the ground.

Chloe isn’t paying much attention to the events following her blow-up with Beca, because she’s too busy milling it over in her head, wondering what she did to make Beca so angry with her.

“Chloe?” Aubrey taps on the redhead’s shoulder as she sits cross-legged in the grass. The rest of the girls, including Beca, are off swimming in the lake and doing God knows what else. Aubrey takes a seat next to her and looks at her intently, as if waiting for Chloe’s mouth to open and starts spilling everything.

“I don’t think I can do it, Bree,” she shakes her head sadly. “I don’t think I can go the rest of the year with her hating me, let alone the rest of my life.”

“Beca doesn’t hate you, I promise,” Aubrey sets a hand on Chloe’s shoulder. “I hate to say it, but that girl is so in love with you. It took me a while to notice, but she is.”

“She can’t possibly be,” Chloe scoffs, tears in her eyes. “She hadn’t spoken to me before today since last April.”

“So what?” Aubrey smiles. “I say go for it, Chlo, otherwise you’ll never know what might’ve been.”

*

“It’s just, everything’s changing so fast and I’m putting all this pressure on myself, you know? I don’t want to fail.” Beca says as the Bellas and Aubrey sit around the campfire later that night. Chloe’s lost all feelings of anger towards Beca, and instead just wants to hear what she has to say.

“But if you just would’ve said something…” Chloe offers weakly.

“Yeah, I know, but I’m weird about that stuff,” Beca replies. “I thought I could figure it out on my own but I can’t.”

(Chloe’s pretty sure they’re not talking about Beca’s studio job anymore.)

“Maybe I don’t have anything original to say,” she sighs. Beca has a brief pow-wow with Emily that leads to all the girls insisting that Emily is a real Bella, although Chloe can’t say that’s her number one concern in this very moment. The two women decide to collaborate for one of Beca’s demos, and Chloe smiles simply because Beca is smiling. She’s missed that.

“I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I’m afraid too,” Chloe starts after Aubrey gives her a look of encouragement. “To move on, to graduate, it’s really scary.”

“Yeah, it actually does seem like it, because you’re barely holding it together,” Amy comments.

“Well, it doesn’t have to be scary, Chloe,” Aubrey turns to face her. “When I was graduating, I never pictured myself running a retreat in the middle of the woods, but here I am. Take it from someone who’s dealt with some serious control issues.” Aubrey then relays some quote of her father’s about losing your feet and Chloe definitely doesn’t get it, but she appreciates the sentiment.

“Then it’s decided,” Chloe stands up proudly. “This year, I will graduate, and the Worlds will be my swan song.” None of the girls look very convinced, and truthfully, Chloe doesn’t feel convinced, but she perseveres regardless. “I mean it! I’ll pursue my passion: I’ll teach underprivileged children how to sing, or I’ll dance exotically, whatever offers the most money.” She sits back down and looks to Aubrey for approval, who gives her a nod full of smiles and quiet reassurance.

Cynthia Rose announces that she’s moving to Maine to get married, and all the girls are invited, which feels a bit like the light at the end of the Barden-shaped tunnel that is Chloe’s life. She now knows that no matter what happens, they’ll all be together again soon, even if it’s not as the Bellas.

(She now knows that no matter what happens, she’ll see Beca again.)

“You know, when I look back on this,” Beca says, “I won’t remember performing or competing, I’m gonna remember you weirdos. It makes me really sad to think that it won’t ever be like this again.” Beca glances up at Chloe, eyes full of uncertainty, as she says: “I’m gonna miss you guys.”

(Chloe has selective hearing; she doesn’t quite catch the “guys” at the end of that sentence, and she completely forgets that there are nine other girls sitting around her and Beca.)

“I’ve got my ticket for the long way ‘round,” Chloe starts to sing and Beca just smiles. For the first time maybe ever, she really just smiles at Chloe before she joins in. “Two bottles of whiskey for the way.”

“And I sure would like some sweet company, and I’m leaving tomorrow, what do you say?” the rest of the Bellas join in on various harmonies.

“When I’m gone,” Beca sings, her eyes piercing into Chloe’s soul, “when I’m gone, oh you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”

“You’re gonna miss me by my hair,” Flo sings, “you’re gonna miss me everywhere, oh you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”

“Did we just find our sound?” Beca asks as she blinks the tears out of her eyes.

“I think we did.”

*

After releasing Amy from the bear trap she got caught in on her way to win back Bumper, Chloe sets out to find Beca. The brunette slipped away after all the Bellas went back to the tent to sing songs from their old sets.

Chloe walks around the camp for what feels like hours until she hears a quiet sniffle from behind the brick wall of the main building. She rounds the corner and her heart sinks at the sight in front of her: Beca is slumped against the wall, head between her knees, arms forming a protective wall around her head as she cries.

“Beca, are you okay?” Chloe asks quietly, frozen in place a few feet away from Beca. The younger girl’s head snaps up and Chloe only breaks more at the sight of Beca’s watery, bloodshot eyes.

“I, uh- I’m fine,” she sniffles, wiping her nose with the back of her sleeve. “Just… You can go back to the tent.”

“I was actually looking for you,” Chloe sits down next to her, “so that we could talk.” Beca looks a little shocked, but she nods anyway.

“So first of all-” Chloe starts.

“I’m really sorry for-” Beca says at the same time, making them chuckle a little. “Sorry, you start.”

“First of all, I wanted to say I’m sorry for the way I’ve been acting lately,” Chloe says. “You were right, I was obsessed with winning the Worlds and I was too scared to leave-”

“Hey, I shouldn’t have said any of that,” Beca interrupts, but she doesn’t look sorry for doing it. “That’s actually what I was trying to say just now, that I’m sorry for what I said to you today. It was wrong of me.”

“It’s okay,” Chloe shrugs. “You were right about most of it, but… I didn’t fail Russian Lit three times to be a Bella, or because I was scared to leave Barden… I was scared to leave you.”

“Me?” Chloe can see Beca’s eyes widen, even in the dark. “Why would you be scared to leave me?” Chloe just laughs.

(Chloe has to laugh at the irony of it all.)

“Because I’m in love with you, Beca,” Chloe chides. “How did you not notice, for almost four years?”

“I- I don’t-” Beca stutters. “I didn’t know,” she says lamely, and she clearly knows how lame it sounds as she says it. “Oh God, that sounds awful. Chloe, I…”

(Chloe is expecting one of a few things: Beca could say “I don’t feel that way about you,” she could say “I love you too,” or she could say “I have no idea what is going on.”)

(Chloe is not expecting what she gets.)

“Jesse and I broke up,” Beca blurts out after a lull of silence. “Well, he broke up with me, actually.”

“What?” Chloe gasps, and it’s out of genuine surprise. As far as Chloe knew, the couple weren’t having any problems after like, two summers ago when they took a break. “What happened?”

“I told him,” Beca mumbles, her fingers nervously picking at the hem of her jeans.

“Told him what?”

“I told him that I was in love with someone else,” Beca says, her voice barely above a whisper.

(Chloe’s first thought is one of anger at Beca for giving Chloe a second person to feel like she’s competing against.)

(Chloe’s obviously not the sharpest tool in the shed.)

“Oh, Becs, I’m sorry,” Chloe sighs, but she can’t think of anything else to say. “Well, I hope it works out for you and whoever it is.” Chloe goes to stand up when Beca puts a hand on her knee.

“Chloe, sit down,” Beca commands. “Are you serious?”

“Serious about what?” Chloe shakes her head confusedly. “I can’t want you to be happy?”

“It’s _you_ , Chloe!” she practically yells in the redhead’s face. “I’m in love with _you_ , idiot!”

Now it’s Chloe’s turn to be speechless. Luckily, Beca doesn’t give her a chance to say anything.

“You were it for me, Chloe, freshman year,” she says. “But you never said anything so I kissed Jesse after the ICCA’s when I wanted to be kissing you.”

“Why did you stay with him, then?” Chloe asks out of curiosity.

“You were graduating,” she replies simply. “I didn’t know when I’d see you again- if I’d see you again. I stayed with Jesse because he was consistent, and I knew how he felt about me, but I just got so tired of the guilt.”

“The guilt of what we did?” Chloe asks and Beca shakes her head.

“No, the guilt of staying with him even though I never saw him as much more than a friend,” Beca smiles sadly. “You know, we never did anything wrong. When we would fight, he would tell me we were done and that he never wanted to see me again, and over the stupidest shit. So I’d come see you, because you never treated me like that.” Chloe doesn’t have the first idea what to say to Beca, about any of her confessions, so she cups Beca’s face in both hands and kisses her.

It may not be Chloe’s best idea, but she hasn’t kissed Beca in two and a half years, and it all comes flooding back like a dam’s gates being opened, all of the love and lust for her best friend taking over her senses and better judgement.

Beca is still for a split second, but her hands fly up to Chloe’s neck and her lips dance along with Chloe’s like two puzzle pieces that are finally together. To Chloe, it feels like she’s ascending from a coffin in the ground, where’s she’s been laying her whole life, and Beca’s lips are breathing the life back into her. It feels categorically different from the dozens of other times they’ve kissed, this time like walking into a warm room after spending all day in the rain, like climbing into bed after an exhausting day.

Beca’s always felt like coming home, but now, in the cool air of the forest in the middle of the night, Chloe feels like she’s finally there.

*

Graduation hits the Bellas like a truck, sneaking up behind them and slapping them in the face.

Chloe, however, can’t wait.

She doesn’t study for her Russian Lit final, but her professor uses the same test from her first year, and it takes her twenty minutes to finish.

She gets a 100.

After the retreat, Beca and Chloe didn’t talk about anything other than what Chloe did during spring break last year, but Chloe is sated with just knowing that her and Beca are on good terms again.

(She’s sated with the fact that Beca sleeps in her bed almost every night leading up to graduation, and she tells Chloe that she loves her every morning when they wake up together.)

Emily takes a great picture of the girls in their caps and gowns, and they set off for the hall where the graduation is being hosted.

The month leading up to the Worlds is a blur, and all of a sudden Chloe’s in Copenhagen with Beca, sharing an umbrella with the girl and taking selfies as they eat Danishes.

Chloe gets a little jealous when Beca makes some comment about Kommissar’s sweat smelling like cinnamon, but Beca kisses her in front of all the Bellas and whispers in her ear that “her sweat smells better.”

By some force that Chloe doesn’t understand, the Barden Bellas win the World Championship of a cappella. Das Sound Machine is just that, a machine, but the Bellas have heart, and that’s exactly what she tells the girls during the entire flight home, while Beca’s hands rests on her thigh.

*

Chloe gets a job teaching music in her hometown of Portland, and Beca gets a legit studio job in LA. Their goodbye is one of the hardest things Chloe’s ever had to do, but she knows it’s the best thing for both of them.

Beca and Chloe have been riding a wave of manic love and toxic fights for four years, and it’s in their best interests to spend some time apart.

They mutually decide to not speak for four months, and when they see each other at Cynthia Rose’s wedding in December, if they still feel the same way about each other, then there will be more to discuss.

“It’ll be fine,” Chloe reassures Beca as they stand in front of the brunette’s gate. Of course, they both booked flights for the same day so that they could see each other in the airport. “It’s gonna be the fastest four months ever.”

(Chloe wants to believe it, for Beca’s sake, but she knows it’s not going to be easy.)

“Yeah,” Beca nods, her smile weak and not meeting her eyes, and she throws herself into Chloe’s arms as they call for final boarding over the loudspeaker. “I have to go.”

“I love you,” Chloe says like it’s a hail mary, one last attempt to thwart the plans she had an equal hand in forming.

“I love you too, Chlo.” Their lips meet in one last kiss, full of desperation and salty tears, before Beca gets on the plane, walking backwards the whole way to the desk so that she can stare at Chloe for as long as possible.

Chloe waits until the plane has taken off before she begins walking sluggishly to her own gate.

As she sits on the plane, waiting for the rest of the passengers to board, Chloe deletes Beca’s number.

It hurts just as much as she expects it to, but it also lifts a weight off her shoulders that Chloe didn’t even know she was holding.

*

Chloe cries a lot when she first moves back to Portland.

She was originally staying in her old room at her parents’ house, but there are just too many Beca-related memories there, whether it be the days they spent there together three summers ago or how hard she cried over her best friend the summer after that.

It takes her two weeks of sleepless nights filled with tears to move into a studio apartment downtown. It’s not much, but Chloe makes it her own, and it’s across the street from a hipster coffee shop and the complex has a gym.

She channels her longing for Beca into kickboxing, which she starts in said complementary gym. Something about punching and kicking a bag, or someone’s well-protected body, is therapeutic to Chloe.

She also falls completely in love with teaching. Her kids are the absolute lights of her life, and waking up at five AM every morning is one of her favorite things to do just because she gets to watch them shake maracas or bang on congas.

Nevertheless, it’s still incredibly hard to be on her own.

She talks to Stacie a lot, as well as Amy, simply because they’re the only ones who will tell her about Beca.

Chloe talks to Aubrey every other day, if not daily, and Aubrey has mentioned that she talks to Beca on occasion, but she never gets into the details of their conversations. Even Stacie and Amy refrain from saying too much, probably knowing that it’ll just make Chloe sob into the phone.

(Amy did tell Chloe in November that Beca had said “her entire existence is waiting for this wedding.” Chloe doesn’t immediately know how it makes her feel.)

(Honestly, Chloe’s just making shit up at this point. It’s Beca. She’s like a kid in a candy store.)

The Thursday before the Saturday wedding, Chloe’s dad drives her to the airport to fly up to Maine. She gets a call from an unknown number at 10:15 at night, since she’s catching the midnight flight. She almost doesn’t answer, but her dad tells her that ignoring calls is “rude, even if it is just an automated robot trying to steal your credit card information.”

“Chloe Beale,” she says into the phone.

“ _Are you on the midnight flight from Portland to Augusta?_ ” an unforgettable voice rasps on the other line.

It’s Beca.

“Beca?” she gasps and her dad’s head turns abruptly to look at her, causing her to take the call off speaker. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it’s you.”

“ _Just answer the question, Beale,_ ” she laughs, but it’s not enough to conceal the excitement and nervousness dripping off her words. “ _Is that your flight?_ ”

“Um, it’s flight number 277, on Southwest,” Chloe reads from her ticket information. “Why?”

“ _Because…_ ” Beca says and mumbles unintelligibly, probably talking to someone else, “ _I just bought a ticket. I drove up from LA. I’m at the check-in desk._ ”

“I can’t believe you would do that,” Chloe says incredulously, “and without even knowing I was flying out of this airport.” Chloe’s dad parks the car in the drop-off zone and gives her a quick hug before practically shoving her out of the car, waving Chloe off and pointing behind her as she stands on the curb.

“ _I see you._ ” The three words send Chloe on a bender, turning to look at whatever her father pointed at, and she swears her heart falls out of her ass when she sees Beca fucking Mitchell standing awkwardly in the middle of the airport, waving shyly at her through the window. Chloe hangs up the phone, yells a quick “sorry Dad” to her father and runs as fast as she can with her suitcase through the airport’s sliding doors. She skids to a halt just a few feet away from Beca, unsure of how to greet the brunette, but the inner debate is resolved for her when Beca throws her arms around Chloe’s neck and crushes her in a hug.

“Don’t ever make me do that again,” Beca mumbles over Chloe’s shoulder, and it’s enough to make her lean back and connect their lips in a kiss that sets both of them on fire.

*

“So, did you, like, date anyone in LA?” Chloe asks on the flight. She had been planning to sleep the whole way, but no way is she sleeping when the love of her life is sitting right next to her after four months of being apart.

“No, Chlo, I didn’t date anyone,” Beca chuckles. “Did you?”

“No,” Chloe shakes her head. “I can’t imagine dating anyone but you.” Chloe’s widen when she realizes what she’s just said. “Oh God, did I say that out loud?”

“Chill, dude,” Beca squeezes Chloe’s hand. “I can’t imagine dating anyone but you either.”

*

The wedding is everything Chloe imagined it would be and more.

She had booked a room with Aubrey, who swiftly traded room keys with Beca so that the two could “get to know each other again.”

Seeing all of the Bellas again is easily Chloe’s second favorite part of the whole event. The women get drunk and tell stories of their post-collegiate lives, some of them good and others disastrous, but they’re all able to forget whatever troubles they have in life and come together for a weekend as a family.

The ceremony itself is beautiful.

Cynthia Rose’s wife, a woman named Carly, is kind and down to Earth, and CR’s vows are easily the most romantic things Chloe’s ever heard said to another person. It’s clear how much they love each other, and Chloe makes a point of cheering as loud as she can when they kiss.

The reception doesn’t take long to turn into an all-out Bella fest, the women getting down to songs from their sets together as well as songs they could only dream of singing together.

Chloe gets a little too drunk, and she doesn’t even notice that Beca doesn’t touch a drop of alcohol until they head back up to their room.

Chloe gets handsy with her in the elevator, a hand snaking up her dress and lips mouthing at Beca’s neck.

“Hey, hold on a second,” Beca backs away, putting some space between the two of them that Chloe wants nothing more than to close. “I want you to remember this. I want it to mean something. I mean, we haven’t… you know, since before our falling out, and I just-”

“I get it,” Chloe smiles, and she does. She completely understands Beca’s reservations. “Another time.”

*

It does happen.

It’s slow, and sweet, and their movements aren’t sluggish from alcohol or borderline violent from anger, and the whole experience causes Chloe’s consciousness to literally leave her body for a few minutes.

“I want to be with you,” Beca says as they lay in the hotel bed, her fingers tracing patterns on the smooth skin of Chloe’s stomach. “I don’t know how, but I know that’s what I want.”

“I want that too,” Chloe says. “And I’ll do whatever it takes to make it work.”


	2. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beta and Chloe suck at communicating, but this time they're adults so it's much more embarrassing!

“Beca, come on, we’re gonna be late!” Chloe shouts down the hall.

“Coming!” Beca calls back, the sound distant and muffled by the senseless crash of objects in the room, but even after nearly a decade of knowing Beca, it still makes Chloe’s heart race. Beca finally appears in the doorway of their room, looking beyond exhausted just from last-minute packing. 

“You brought warm clothes?” Chloe asks and Beca just nods, strong-arming their suitcases, one in each hand, down the stairs and into their SUV while Chloe handles their daughter. “Bella, you’re all set?” she asks the three year old who just nods happily, babbling as Chloe buckles her into her car seat.

“Okay, let’s go,” Beca slips into the driver’s seat, adjusting her mirrors and pulling the seat forward so that her feet can reach the pedals, all while Chloe just watches her.

(This is something Chloe does a lot. Her eyes always find their way to Beca, no matter what she’s doing, because Beca is _hers._ )

(Five years together and she’s still not used to that fact.)

“Remind me again why we decided to drive to Vancouver?” Chloe asks as they merge onto Portland’s main highway, the one that will take them all the way to their destination.

“It’s an adventure,” Beca smiles, eyes never leaving the road.

(Beca is an unnecessarily careful driver. It used to annoy Chloe, along with the rest of the Bellas, but now Chloe just thinks it’s endearing.)

“It’s six hours of _sitting_ ,” Chloe corrects, turning to check on her daughter, who is fast asleep in the back. “Besides, at this rate we aren’t going to get there until quarter-till nine, and by the time we put Bella down it’ll be-”

“Woah, relax,” Beca takes one hand off the wheel and lets it rest on Chloe’s thigh. “Are you nervous to see the girls?”

“It’s just-” Chloe stammers, “I haven’t seen some of them since CR’s wedding, and… what if they’re not happy for us?”

“Why wouldn’t they be happy for us?” Beca questions, but her tone is full of concern and genuine curiosity rather than her usual sarcasm.

“Because we never got married,” Chloe says quietly.

“Oh, baby,” Beca sighs, her hand moving slowly up and down Chloe’s thigh. “I really don’t think they’re going to be bothered. I mean, Aubrey’s already chewed me out enough times for ‘not treating her sister right,’ so I don’t think there’s much the others could say that would scare me.” Chloe pauses to take in Beca’s words, letting them mull in her brain before she responds.

“Besides,” Beca continues, “it was our decision to not get married.”

“Right,” Chloe says, and she knows Beca’s not wrong. They did decide to adopt Bella under a domestic partnership, even though they could have gotten married.

They decided together.

(Chloe thought, and still thinks, that Beca might not want to marry her.)

“You’se okay?” Beca says in a baby voice, the same way she does to Bella when she falls over, and the way she does to Chloe when the redhead is feeling anxious.

“I’se okay,” she replies with a wry smile, but it seems to satisfy her girlfriend for the time being, because Beca turns the radio on to the R&B station and starts humming the Ignition remix as quietly as she can so as not to wake the sleeping child.

“So… Jesse’s gonna be there,” Chloe says as they near the Canadian border.

“Yeah, he’s Benji’s best man, I think,” Beca replies, her face unchanged. “Did you hear about Aubrey and Stacie? Emily told me that they’re going to the wedding together-”

“Can we go back a little?” Chloe interrupts her, saving the _very_ interesting Aubrey information for later. “You haven’t seen Jesse since you guys broke up.”

“Yeah,” Beca nods, the point going completely over her head.

“Does he know about us?” Chloe presses. “About Bella?”

“I didn’t tell him, so I’d be surprised if he did,” Beca replies. “If Benji told him, then he’d know, but I can’t imagine he would.”

“So you want it that way,” Chloe says flatly. After all these years, she still has some serious attachment issues, as well as the tendency to see things that aren’t there.

(A prime example: Beca somehow _still_ having feelings for Jesse.)

“Woah, what are you talking about?” Beca gawks at her. “If you’re trying to say that I purposefully didn’t tell Jesse about us, then you’re wrong.” Beca is on defense now, her hand drawn back up to grip the wheel, eyes like glaciers flicking from the road to Chloe’s face and back again.

“I didn’t tell Jesse because I haven’t spoken to him since we broke up,” Beca grits out. “And for you to insinuate that I still love him, or that I _ever_ loved him the way I love you is just-”

“I’m sorry,” Chloe shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have said that, it just slipped out.”

“It’s okay, I just…” Beca runs a hand through her hair, tugging at the roots the way she does when she can’t quite get the words out of her mouth.

(Chloe says stupid shit a lot, and it often renders Beca speechless the way it is now. Chloe’s learned her mannerisms so that she knows exactly how to handle a tired Beca, an angry Beca, or a completely-lost-and-upset Beca.)

“I know,” Chloe turns in her seat to look at Beca, her seatbelt straining at her shoulder. “I shouldn’t have said anything-”

“No, I’m glad you did,” Beca smiles softly, her hand returning to its rightful place on Chloe’s thigh. “You’ve obviously been thinking about it, and I never want you to worry.”

“I love you,” Chloe says.

“I love you too.”

*

After a bit of a struggle at border patrol due to Beca’s passport being “just like, a week expired,” and a very nice officer letting them through, saying pointedly that the month listed was December, not November, the trio arrive at their hotel. Beca quickly finds Cynthia Rose’s wife Carly in the lobby, who graciously offered to watch Bella along with her own son while Chloe and Beca head to the bar for the Bellas reunion before the ceremony tomorrow. After an overprotective Beca drills Bella’s bedtime into Carly’s brain, the couple gets changed and head to the bar across the street.

“It’s gonna be great,” Beca smiles her big, adorable _Beca_ smile, squeezing Chloe’s hand and dragging her through the doors of the bar.

“Guys, it’s Bloe!” Amy is the first of the women to notice them, pointing and shouting as she meets their gazes. The group of eight women jump to their feet and practically pounce on Beca and Chloe, squeezing them tightly and yelling variations of “it’s so good to see you” and “bitch, yes!”

(Some tears were shed.)

(All of them by Chloe.)

After the commotion settles, they pull up chairs to the table and seat themselves, Chloe with Aubrey on her right and Beca on her left. Chloe’s eyebrow raises suspiciously at how close Aubrey’s chair is to Stacie’s, but from the angle, she can’t quite make out what’s going on under the table.

“So, Beca, how’s the producing job with Khaled working out?” Cynthia Rose asks from across the table, her chin resting in her hands.

“Actually, I quit,” Beca says after taking a sip of her scotch. The group erupts in a chorus of confusion before Chloe shushes them, giving her girlfriend a chance to explain herself.

“Go on,” she whispers to Beca, kicking her in the shin a little.

“I didn’t want to be so far from Bella,” she says with a lilt in her voice that Chloe knows is from the guilt of seeing her daughter every other weekend for two years. “It’s a fourteen hour drive from Portland, and flying back and forth just wasn’t sustainable.”

The women look completely enthralled, as if they’re hanging onto Beca’s every word, and Chloe would laugh, but she knows that she looks exactly the same. 

“Besides,” she turns to look at Chloe, her gaze oozing with tenderness and affection, “we did the long-distance thing the first year we were together, and I vowed I would never put myself through that again. I should know by now that I can’t be without her.” Beca just nods her head in Chloe’s direction, but the redhead is over reading too much into Beca’s attempts to nullify affection.

She knows Beca loves her.

And that’s all she needs.

*

“So, Bree,” Chloe leans into Aubrey’s side, “anything you want to tell me about?”

“What are you talking about?” Aubrey’s voice comes out shaky and way higher than Chloe anticipated, so she knows for sure that something’s up.

“You and Stacie seem awfully close,” Chloe shrugs nonchalantly, hoping to elicit some sort of reaction from her friend.

“What, I can’t want to catch up with my friends?” Aubrey replies curtly, her voice just a _little_ too sharp for Chloe to think that it’s normal. “I mean, look at Beca and Fat Amy, they’re doing the same thing!”

Aubrey points to the edge of the bar, where Beca is leaned close to Amy’s ear, clearly whispering something that causes the Australian’s eyes to widen considerably, launching them into a heated discussion.

“What are they talking about?” Chloe asks, though it’s more to herself.

“How should I know?” Aubrey scoffs. “I can’t hear what they’re saying anymore than you-” Aubrey stops speaking mid-sentence and inhales sharply, one hand reaching forward to grab onto the edge of the table.

“You okay, Bree?” Stacie asks and the blonde just nods, her cheeks flushing gradually until they reach a tomato shade. Stacie’s face is contorted in an evil smirk, her hands nowhere to be found since they’ve disappeared under the table.

It takes Chloe a second too long to figure out what’s going on next to her, but once she does, she resists the urge to scream and excuses herself to the bathroom.

( _Wow._ Aubrey’s finally getting some. Chloe’s happy for her, she just wishes it wasn’t happening the weekend of Emily’s wedding _right next to her._ )

She takes a moment to observe her reflection in the mirror, smiling a little to watch the quirk of her lips push the corners of her eyes up. Chloe has never seen herself as particularly good-looking, but after hearing Beca ramble about the slope of her nose and the gleam in her eyes and _other things_ , she doesn’t find herself searching for parts of herself she needs to change.

“Hey, Red, I need to talk to you,” Amy barges into the bathroom, causing Chloe to turn around with a yelp.

“God, Amy, you scared me,” she says on an exhale, her hand clutching her chest as if that’s going to make a difference. “What’s up?”

“I just spoke with Beca,” Amy says.

“Yeah, I saw,” Chloe drawls. “And?”

“And she said she thinks you don’t want to marry her,” Amy says quickly and on one breath.

“Wait, what?” This is news to Chloe. Beca was the one who first brought up the idea of not getting married, so why would she think that Chloe doesn’t want to get married?

“She said she’s been hinting at it for ages and you never said anything,” Amy continues, “so she brought up the whole ‘let’s have a kid without getting married thing.’”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Chloe mutters. “I’ve been dropping hints for _years_ , and she never seemed to get it!”

“Sounds like a classic case of ‘Bloe miscommunication,’” Amy tuts and leaves the bathroom without another word. 

(Great. Now Chloe’s got even more doubts.)

*

The next morning, Chloe is awoken by the sound of music coming from the hotel bathroom. She spreads her arms out in the bed in search of Beca, but she only feels the soft sheets and the tangle of blankets beside her. She sits up quickly, trying to keep the panic bubbling in her stomach at bay.

“Becs?” she calls out, her eyes scanning the empty room.

“Mommy!” Bella shouts from inside the bathroom and Chloe hears the door open, followed by her daughter sprinting towards her and hopping up and down at the foot of the bed.

“Hey, lion,” she crawls forward and lifts Bella onto the bed, tickling the little girl mercilessly as she giggles.

(When Bella was born, Beca insisted that she looked like a lion every time she would yawn, hence the nickname. Chloe swore it wouldn’t stick, but here they are.)

When Chloe finally lets up, Bella launches into a babbled monologue about her evening with Carly and Micah, who she insists is her new best friend. Chloe nods enthusiastically in all the right places, encouraging Bella to keep talking, even after the bathroom door opens again and Beca steps out in her bridesmaid dress.

The dress is long enough on Beca to touch the floor but it’s the perfect combination of flowy and fitted, the navy fabric hugging Beca’s torso and tapering off down her legs.

Bella catches wind of the woman in the doorway, launching herself off the bed and quickly being scooped up by her mother.

“Hey, you little rule breaker,” Beca says as she balances Bella on her hip. “What do we say about jumping off the furniture?”

“Don’t do it unless I want a me-shaped hole in the ground,” Bella says with a goofy smile that Chloe swears she got from Beca, despite her girlfriend insisting that it’s impossible.

“That’s right,” Beca nods and sets her daughter down, ushering her off to get her dress out of her bag. Chloe slides off the bed and walks slowly towards Beca, taking in every accentuated feature of her face, from the pop of her eyes thanks to the shadow surrounding them all the way to the contour of her darkened lips. She leans in silently to kiss Beca, but she ends up inches away from the woman’s face thanks to a hand on her collarbone keeping her there.

“It took me forever to get this lipstick on,” Beca shakes her head. “And you need to get ready.” Chloe can see the resolve in Beca’s eyes slipping away as Chloe moves closer, capturing her bottom lip between her own. Beca’s hands tangle up in Chloe’s messy hair while Chloe pulls her closer by her waist, letting herself get lost in the languidness of the kiss.

“Mama, I thought you said we could get breakfast when Mommy woke up?” Bella pipes up after getting her dress out (and leaving it crumpled in a ball on the floor).

“She’s right,” Beca says lowly, still so close that Chloe can feel her lips move as she speaks, “I did say that.”

Chloe has to resist the urge to grunt in frustration when Beca steps back, already missing the feeling of having Beca close to her.

(Chloe finds herself in a constant state of wanting Beca, or having Beca, and when she’s not doing one she is certainly doing the other.)

“How about you take her down to get some food, and then I’ll get her ready while you deal with the rodent that’s clearly living in your hair?” Beca proposes and Chloe rolls her eyes, shoving Beca in the side but nodding nonetheless.

After wrangling her hair into a messy bun and putting on the pants she meant to sleep in but somehow disappeared during the night, Chloe and Bella head down to take advantage of the continental breakfast provided by their hotel. Bella insists on piling her plate high with waffles and bacon, despite Chloe’s repeated attempts to persuade her to add some fruit to the mountain of crap she’s selected. Chloe spots Cynthia Rose and Micah leaving the dining room just as they sit down, and Bella throws a fit over them leaving after only a quick chat.

“Mommy, can I ask something?” Bella says quietly on their way back up to the room. After seeing Micah and her massive tantrum, she hasn’t been her usual chatty self.

“Of course, lion,” Chloe smiles and lifts her up as they approach the elevator.

“Auntie CR has a ring on her finger,” Bella observes and Chloe’s stomach drops, “and so does Carly.”

“Yes, love, they’re married,” Chloe explains. “Just like aunt Emily is going to be after today.”

“Are you and Mama married?” she asks, and Chloe can’t be upset about it, because how is her three year old daughter supposed to understand her parents’ terrible communication skills?

“No, we’re not,” Chloe sighs. “We decided to have you without getting married.”

“But you will, right?” Bella stares Chloe down with her big blue eyes. “You’ll marry Mama?”

“Maybe,” Chloe smiles weakly as the elevator doors open. “I hope so.”

“Make sure you get her a nice ring,” Bella advises as she wriggles out of her mother’s grip. “But nothing too big, since Mama’s hands are small.” Chloe has to laugh at the fact that her toddler just made fun of Beca being tiny, choosing to ignore the irony in the statement.

“I’ll be sure to do that,” she replies as the door clicks open and she nearly slams into Beca.

“Shi-shoot, sorry,” Beca says as she weasels her way around Chloe. “Emily texted, said there was some kind of emergency. Can you get ready and watch Bella at the same time?”

“Yeah, sure, go,” Chloe nods and Beca’s out the door, her thank you coming from down the hall as she goes to the rescue.

“Your mama’s weird, you know,” Chloe says to Bella and shuts the door behind her.

“Well, you picked her,” Bella giggles.

“Yeah,” Chloe smiles fondly. “Yeah, I did.”

*

Chloe is taking one last look at herself in the mirror when there’s a knock on the bathroom door.

“Chlo, you almost ready?” Beca says from the other side. “We’ve gotta get going.”

“Coming!” she calls back and touches up her lipstick before exiting the bathroom. Chloe’s greeted with a sight that makes her heart melt: Beca in her bridesmaid dress, with Bella on her back in a dress similar in color.

“What are you two troublemakers getting up to?” Chloe crosses her arms as she surveys the pair.

“Mama’s making me fly!” Bella giggles as Beca runs around the room with her arms out like an airplane, the smaller girl (though not by much) laying on her back with a contagious smile on her face. “Mama, can I fly airplanes when I’m big?”

“You can be anything you want to be,” Beca replies easily, rolling Bella off her back and into her arms in one smooth motion that makes Chloe nervous every time she does it.

“Can I have short hair?” Bella asks, poking at Beca’s nose. “Like Micah?”

“Sure,” Beca nods and Bella claps her hands excitedly, starting to explain what she likes about Micah’s curly, brown hair all while Beca seems to get lost in her daughter’s excitement, her jaw going slack and her eyes shining with something that Chloe thinks is awe.

Chloe finds herself watching Beca watch Bella, forever grateful that she’s privy to moments like these, moments where all of Beca’s walls fall down and Chloe gets to see the tender, raw woman that she fell in love with.

It’s not often that Beca expresses her feelings to anyone but Chloe, and even though Bella is technically an extension of Chloe, it still tugs at her heartstrings when they play together, or Bella talks and Beca just listens like she’s reciting the cure to Alzheimer’s or bringing wartorn countries together.

It’s moments like these, when Beca is getting lost in Bella’s eyes (which are, to the tee, _Chloe’s_ eyes), and she tears her gaze away from her daughter and smiles at Chloe, that the redhead is reminded that Beca is truly happy to be a part of their little family.

“Come on, you two,” Chloe reluctantly interrupts their little moment, “we’re gonna be late to the wedding if we don’t get going.”

“Is auntie Emily gonna be there?” Bella asks with a grin, clearly not understanding that the couple getting married is usually in attendance.

“Yes, lion, Emily is gonna be there,” Beca smiles, propping her daughter up on her hip as she heads for the door. “She’s marrying Benji, remember?”

“Oh, yeah!” Bella nods as if she’s known all along. “Like you’re gonna marry mommy!”

Chloe stops in her tracks, and Beca seems to be doing the exact same, their brains short-circuiting over Bella’s comment. Beca looks up at Chloe with a hopeful look in her eyes, before her gaze flits back to the three year old in her arms.

“Maybe,” she shrugs, smiling in a way that Chloe knows is for show because it doesn’t quite make her eyes crease at the edges the way her “Bella smile” typically does.

They leave the hotel and pile into the car with minimal conversation, the strained silence between Beca and Chloe making the redhead’s leg bounce with nerves.

“Still nervous?” Beca questions quietly over the soft sound of the radio and Bella’s lap-drumming that’s just a little bit off tempo.

Chloe knows that Beca thinks she’s nervous about the wedding, whatever aspect it may be, but she can say with confidence that she’s not. None of the girls gave her any trouble over her and Beca’s status, aside from Amy’s bathroom confession. In fact, Beca took a lot more heat for quitting her job at DJ Khaled’s label in LA than either of them for their lack of rings.

“No, just…” Chloe trails off. She really doesn’t want to have this conversation right now, and it seems like Beca doesn’t either, because she reaches for Chloe’s hand and intertwines their fingers, squeezing lightly as she says “later.”

(So now, Chloe gets to spend the rest of what is bound to be a long day worrying about the details of this conversation they’ve just put a “later” pin in, and what will come of it.)

*

After Beca parks the car, the family of three make their way to the back room of the church, where the Bellas who are bridesmaids are getting ready over bottles of Prosecco. They all squeal when Beca and Chloe enter, Bella hiding shyly behind Chloe’s legs before Aubrey manages to coax her out.

“Now, where’s the little Barden baby?” Aubrey pretends to search the room for Bella, her hand cupped over her eyes like a telescope.

“I’m here, Posen! I’m here!” Bella squeals and Aubrey scoops her up and holds her over her head. Chloe grimaces at Bella’s term of referral for Aubrey, which she picked up from Beca’s refusal to call Aubrey anything but her last name.

“I’m gonna let that one go,” Aubrey says, staring Beca down. “Emily’s asking for you, Mitchell, she’s across the hall.”

“Duty calls,” Beca smiles at Chloe weakly, and Chloe hates it. Beca leans in to kiss her on the cheek before darting out of the room, and Chloe hates it.

She hates the way Beca acts around her when words unsaid hang in the air, and she hates the way Aubrey and the others stare at her like she’s an alien after the exchange.

“Can we talk about anything but me, please?” Chloe pleads, her eyes moving from Aubrey and Bella to Cynthia Rose, Stacie, Flo, and Lily, who all nod and break out in meaningless conversation.

The girls are all over Bella, asking her about preschool, her favorite animals and toys, while Stacie if she has any crushes, to which Chloe slaps her upside the head and glares at her.

“Mommy, what’s a crush?” Bella asks innocently.

“It’s what Aubrey has on Stacie,” Cynthia Rose snickers and Chloe tries hard not to laugh as she touches up Flo’s eyeliner, but she can’t seem to contain herself and Flo ends up with a black line all the way across her temple.

“It’s when you like someone a lot, and you want to spend lots of time with them, and kiss them,” Chloe tries to explain as dutifully as she can.

“Do you have a crush on Mama?”

“I used to,” Chloe smiles at her daughter as she finishes repairing the damage she did to Flo’s face. “I had a crush on her for a very long time, and she had a crush on me too, but now we’re in love.”

“I’m glad you and Mama are in love now,” Bella says.

“Me too, kid,” Chloe sighs wistfully, “me too.”

“Ahem,” someone clears their throat and Chloe turns around to see Beca standing bashfully in the doorway, looking like Bella when she gets herself into trouble.

(It doesn’t take long for Chloe to realize that Beca was eavesdropping.)

(She can’t honestly say that she’s upset about it. She didn’t say anything that Beca shouldn’t already know.)

“It’s time,” Beca tells the women. “I’m gonna take Bella to sit with Ms. Junk, okay?” Chloe nods and watches Beca hold Bella’s hand as they leave the room, Beca returning moments later by herself in order to usher the bridesmaids to their places. Chloe gets in line, standing next to Donald from the Trebles and smiling at him, while the others greet their aisle-walking partners with equally polite smiles. Chloe makes the mistake of turning to look at Beca, who is, of course, walking with Jesse. The pair seem to be catching up politely, and Chloe knows deep down that it’s nothing serious or important, but when Jesse meets her gaze, she can’t help the way her jaw sets and her eyebrows furrow.

Chloe’s willing to bet that if looks could kill, Jesse would be six feet under right now.

But the organ starts playing, and the doors open, and Chloe’s got to forget about everything happening in her own life because this is someone’s wedding and she’ll be damned if she makes it the Chloe show.

She walks down the aisle holding a bouquet of lilac colored peonies, smiling extra wide when she spots Bella fidgeting in Ms. Junk’s lap.

Chloe does her best to pay attention to the ceremony, but Benji’s vows take a solid five minutes, and as sweet as they sound, it’s nothing Chloe’s never heard him say to Emily before. So she can’t help her eyes falling on Beca, picturing the two of them standing where their friends are now, exchanging promises and rings and sealing the deal on this little family they have.

By the time Benji “kisses the bride,” Beca’s a mess, her mascara running in streaks down her face due to her tears. People begin to shuffle out of the chapel, passing their congratulations to the newlyweds and hugging each other incredibly tight considering the reception is following in less than five hours.

“Mommy!” Bella shouts and runs as fast as her toddler legs will carry her into Chloe’s outstretched arms, letting herself be squeezed by her mother.

“I hope she didn’t cause you any trouble, Ms. Junk,” Chloe says on behalf of her daughter.

“Please, Chloe, call me Katherine,” Emily’s mother chides. “She was perfect. You must get this all the time, but she looks just like you.”

“Beautiful, right?” Beca comes up from behind Chloe, snaking an arm around her waist.

“Very,” Katherine beams. “Now, will we be seeing the two of you up there soon? Emily had mentioned that you weren’t her matron of honor.”

“Just a maid, for now,” Beca shrugs her shoulders and leaves it there. Bella’s head is buried in the crook of Chloe’s neck and she can feel the toddler yawning, so she tilts her head to the door for Beca to see.

“We’re going to head back, but we’ll see you at the reception?” Chloe asks and Katherine nods, and they wave at the other Bellas before exiting the church.

“Hey, Chloe!” Cynthia Rose, Carly and Micah are standing by the doorway, CR holding Carly, who’s holding Micah, similarly to Chloe’s and Beca’s own stances.

“We can take Bella back, if you guys have some… stuff to work out,” Cynthia Rose offers, giving Chloe a pointed look.

“Micah looks tired,” Beca starts, “we wouldn’t want to-”

“We were just going to put them down for naps,” Carly says. “That way you two can have some peace and quiet?” Chloe looks to Beca who just tilts her head a little, before Chloe turns back to their friend.

“That would be great,” Chloe beams, handing Bella over to CR as delicately as possible before heading to their car, both of the women waving and giving their thanks until they’ve shut themselves in the SUV.

“So,” Beca runs her hands through her hair, “it’s later.”

“It is,” Chloe nods.

Chloe knows what she needs to say, but she doesn’t quite know how to say it.

_I want to marry you. I want to marry you. I want-_

“Do you, like, not want to marry me?” Beca blurts out, her hands white-knuckling the steering wheel even though the car’s not even running.

“What?” Chloe gapes, and she doesn’t know why Beca’s question surprises her seeing as it’s exactly what Amy told her at the bar last night, but it makes all her synapses fire and her hands begin to shake a little.

“It seems like you don’t want us to get married,” Beca repeats, a tremble present in her voice. “It’s just- We could’ve gotten married before we started IVF, but when I brought it up to you, you didn’t really say anything and I- I would have married you the second I saw you in Portland, Chloe… I would do _anything_ for you.” Beca’s crying now, full-fledged tears falling down her face and landing in her lap, on the steering wheel and seat belt.

Chloe knows she means every word of her tangent when she says the last sentence. She chokes on the word “anything,” as if her body wouldn’t let it out of her throat easily, knowing the weight it carried as she coughed it up.

“I’m sorry,” Chloe practically whimpers, her heart in pieces at the look in Beca’s eyes.

Beca looks _broken._

“And of course, everyone chooses now to question when we’re gonna get married, and Bella’s got it figured out, and-”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Chloe scoots over to sit on the center console and pulls Beca to her. Beca sobs into her neck, and Chloe knows she’s absolutely wrecked for the woman in her arms.

“I wanted to marry you after that first night, Becs,” Chloe murmurs into her ear. “I’m sorry I didn’t see how much this was hurting you. You just have to tell me these things, Beca.”

“I know,” Beca sniffles and lifts her head up. “We really suck at communicating sometimes.”

“Aubrey told me after we finally got together that every single one of our problems in college could’ve been resolved with one conversation,” Chloe chuckles as she recalls the memory.

“She’s not wrong,” Beca smiles, and Chloe can’t help but reach out and wipe the tears from her face with the pads of her thumbs. “Hey, I love you. So fucking much. I feel like I don’t tell you that enough, and maybe you still don’t believe me, but I do. I love you.”

“I believe you, Becs,” Chloe feels tears threatening to fall from her own eyes. “It was hard, at first, but you always _show_ me that you love me.” Beca smiles, and her cheeks pull up in a way that Chloe’s always thought looked painful, but it’s so unequivocally Beca, and Chloe thinks she’s even more in love with Beca now than she’s ever been.

(Chloe’s said this several times before: the first time she told Beca she loved her, when they first decided to get pregnant, on the day that Bella was born, when Beca showed up at home with all her bags announcing that she’d quit her job in LA.)

(This time, Chloe’s very confident that she has never felt such a burning, all-consuming love such as this one before.)

(However, she’d never go as far as to say that this is the most she will ever love Beca, because it’s _Beca_ , and the tiny brunette is always full of surprises.)

*

“Of course they’d play ‘Flashlight’ as their first dance,” Beca comments from in front of Chloe, where she leans back into the redhead’s body, more than a little tipsy.

“Shh, it’s romantic,” Chloe swats her on the arm, chewing on her bottom lip nervously. Beca turns around with a look of concern in her eyes, as if she’s got a sixth sense for when Chloe’s freaking out over something.

“She’s fine,” Beca admonishes softly, knowing that Chloe’s worried about leaving Bella with a sitter. “Micah’s there too, and the lady promised to keep her away from scissors so that she doesn’t try to cut her hair.”

“Okay,” Chloe nods.

“You’se okay?” Beca asks sweetly and Chloe just rolls her eyes.

“I’se okay,” Chloe grumbles and drags Beca onto the dance floor.

“I don’t slow dance, Chlo,” Beca whines when Chloe places both hands on Beca’s waist.

“What are we going to have our first dance to, then?”

“No Diggity, obviously,” Beca snickers.

“We’re never getting married.”

*

It takes another year before they actually tie the knot.

Chloe buys a ring the first day back from Vancouver, and she later finds out that Beca went out the day after her to buy one.

Beca beats Chloe to the actual proposal, but she doesn’t even let Beca get on one knee before she grabs the ring from the pocket of her old Barden Bella blazer, because she felt like her sock drawer would be too cliché.

Beca pops the question on a Sunday morning in July, when they have the whole house to themselves after leaving Bella with Chloe’s parents in Georgia after they spent a week with them all together.

They decide to have a winter wedding, January of the next year, and it seems only fitting for them to get married in the church on Barden’s campus.

“Chloe, stop freaking out,” Aubrey tries to calm Chloe down and keep her from pacing the floor of the room designated for her. “It’s gonna be great, just relax.”

“What if she doesn’t show?” Chloe asks, fear dripping from her words. “Oh God, and all these people came, and we’re going to have to tell them the wedding’s off, and-”

“Okay, Chloe, I can’t calm you down when you’re like this,” Aubrey concludes. “I’m gonna go get Beca, okay? I’ll be right back.” Chloe doesn’t register Aubrey’s words fast enough, because her best friend is already gone by the time she shouts “no.”

“Chloe?” Beca says from the other side of the door, her knuckles rapping at the wood. “I’m coming in.” The door swings open and Chloe screeches, scrambling to hide behind the potted plant in the corner.

“Beca, you can’t be in here!” Chloe hisses. “It’s bad luck for us to see each other.”

“Chlo, you thought I’d run off and were pacing, I could hear you from next door,” Beca shakes her head, gently pulling Chloe out from behind the plant. “I’m not gonna let you have a panic attack in here because of some stupid superstition.”

“Beca, I-” Chloe tries to protest but Beca cuts her off with a kiss to her jaw, then her neck, and down to her collarbones made visible by the off-the-shoulder style of the dress.

“Do you need me to calm you down, baby?” Beca says, her voice muffled by Chloe’s skin.

“No, Becs, I just- fuck, I just needed to see you,” she breathes out. Beca pulls away and nods dutifully, her expression sure and confident.

“I would _never_ run away from this,” Beca says firmly, holding Chloe’s hands in hers.

“I know.”

“You’se okay?” Beca nudges her a little, eliciting a smile from Chloe.

“I’se okay.”

*

“You may now read the vows you have prepared for each other,” their officiant, who happens to be Flo, says with a smile. Chloe gestures for Beca to go first, but it takes a second for Beca to register it, which makes Chloe chuckle a little.

(Beca is, evidently, a little out of it.)

“Oh, okay,” Beca says unsteadily. “Well, I’ve been trying for months to prepare some concrete vows, but it always seems like something’s missing, so Amy told me to speak from the heart, which now seems like a terrible idea.” The guests laugh and Amy does a little bow from where she stands next to Beca, happy to hear herself mentioned.

“Chloe, the first time I met you, I was pretty sure you hated me,” Beca starts what Chloe knows is going to be a tear-inducing tangent. “I called a cappella lame, which made Aubrey have it out for me from the get-go, but you… You never stopped being everything I needed you to be. You pushed me to be a Bella, and then to be a _good_ Bella, and you always inspired me to follow my dreams, or do something crazy, and even though we had what was probably the most toxic college experience ever, I wouldn’t change any of it for the world.”

Chloe’s already crying, even though she swore she wouldn’t, because she’s standing in front of Beca Mitchell, who is professing her love for her in front of at least one hundred people, in front of their friends and family and daughter.

Chloe always cries, sometimes for no reason, but this time, she lets the tears fall.

(She knows Beca will wipe them away in a minute.)

“You’re the love of my life, Chlo, and you always have been,” Beca continues, tears welling up in her own eyes, “but before all that, and still to this day, you’re my best friend. So I promise to always be that for you. I promise to talk you down when you’re freaking out, I promise to watch Bella at the aquarium while you go shout at the dolphin trainers for mistreating the animals, I promise to do the dishes and the laundry the first time you ask me-”

“You’re _never_ gonna do that,” Chloe interrupts with a watery laugh.

“Okay, maybe scratch that last one,” Beca laughs with her. “But I promise to always be there for you, no matter what, and I promise to always be there for Bella, because even though she’s not my blood, you’re my family, so she is too, and I promise to _always_ protect our little family.” 

Chloe could fill a bucket with her tears, and her mind is blank of anything else to say, but she does her best.

“It’s probably not appropriate to say ‘same’ in this situation,” Chloe chuckles, “but that’s basically how I feel. I think I’ve known you were going to be important to me since aca-initiation night of your freshman year, but there’s no specific moment that I realized I was in love with you.”

(Chloe chooses to ignore the pointed look and raised eyebrow that Beca gives her at the mention of aca-initiation.)

“My love for you was gradual, this quiet virus in my brain and my heart, spreading from cell to cell until suddenly my entire body was infected with Beca Mitchell, with your laugh and your smile and your snappy one-liners. All of a sudden I was completely gone for you, and I have been ever since.”

It’s Beca’s turn for waterworks now, and Chloe has to physically bite her tongue to keep from making a comment about melting the heart of the ice queen.

“I’ve always hated when people say that their significant other makes them a better person, because that just doesn’t seem healthy in any way. So you don’t necessarily make me better, but you make me _happy_ , Beca. And I know it seems like the simplest thing, because I’m happy almost all the time anyway, but you make my whole body happy, my soul happy, just by being in a room. Seeing you with Bella, or seeing you work, or sing, or smile, or _breathe_ makes me happy, and I promise to try my very best to be a fraction of what you are to me for you.”

“The rings, please?” Flo asks Bella, who’s standing at the foot of the altar with two rings in her hand.

“Do you think it’s too big?” Chloe whispers to her daughter as she takes a ring, and Bella just shakes her head and waves her off.

Beca’s hand is shaking as Chloe slides the band onto her slender finger, and Chloe can’t resist the urge to bring Beca’s hand to her lips, pressing a kiss overtop of the ring.

Beca does the same for Chloe, and Chloe hears a distant sob that she knows immediately is from Emily. 

“By the power vested in me by some website where you can get ordained for free, I now pronounce you wife and wife! You may now kiss each other!”

Beca practically jumps on Chloe, crashing their lips together in a salty kiss. It’s not the neatest kiss Chloe’s ever had, nor the most PG, but it makes her head spin with love for Beca, for her _wife_ , and so it takes every ounce of Chloe’s self control to pull away.

“I am so in love with you,” Beca says as she rests their foreheads together.

“Same.”

*

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Amy says into the screeching microphone at the reception, “if you could please clear the floor for the newlyweds’ first dance.” The guests return to their seats as Beca drags Chloe onto the dance floor with a face-splitting grin.

“Beca, I swear to God-” Chloe starts to yell at Beca but she’s cut off by the opening chords of no other song than No Diggity.

“It's going down, fade to blackstreet, the homies got RB, collab' creations, bump like acne, no doubt, I put it down, never slouch,” Beca starts rapping in the middle of the dance floor, Amy expertly tossing her the mic after the first few lines. “Shorty get down, good lord, baby got 'em up open all over town, strictly biz, she don't play around, cover much ground, got game by the pound.”

Beca’s singing all out into the microphone, dancing obnoxiously around and on Chloe, who finally starts to sing with her for the chorus.

It’s stupid, and when the other Bellas throw all their care for tradition out the window and join them on the dance floor, the whole lot of them break out into chaotic screaming of the refrain and dancing that’s embarrassingly bad for an a cappella group. 

Aubrey comes over halfway through the song with Bella on her shoulders, handing her off to Chloe quickly before Stacie pulls her over to her, and Beca reaches over and covers Bella’s eyes when Aubrey practically shoves her tongue down Stacie’s throat.

Right there, in the middle of a random ballroom in Georgia, with her daughter in her arms and her wife convinced she’s Dr. Dre, is where Chloe wants to stay forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here it is, the curtain call of this one shot that I've fallen so in love with over the past month!
> 
> i hope you all enjoyed this epilogue and i wanted to say thank you to everyone who left kudos and commented your thoughts, it truly means the world to me and gives me reason to continue!
> 
> feel free to message me on tumblr, my url is sentientaltype, or on twitter, @olverburg :))
> 
> cheers xx


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